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beauty and energy of conjugal and maternal example. But especially are young children restrained in their freedom and happiness, and compelled to feel somewhat of the melancholy distrust of strangers and exiles. Instead of being cheered by seeing their parents, like the fixed stars, diffusing blessings to the remotest satellite, they behold them like wandering planets, seeking light and heat from others, or perhaps like comets, whose true rotation has never been calculated, careering through and perplexing other systems.

It is indeed most desirable that little children should enjoy the comforts of a home, and share the cordial of true hospitality. But it is almost equally desirable, that they should be sheltered from that ostentatious and heartless intercourse which fashion authorizes. Every entrance of it under their own roof, interferes with. their accommodation and quiet. Parents and domestics are absorbed in preparations which to them are mysterious. The access of ornaments, the array of fashionable garniture, the heaping together of luxuries, are not for them. The attention of those whom they love, is turned away, or monopolized by objects which they cannot understand. They shrink back to their nurseries, dispirited and forsaken. Perhaps they expend upon each other their heightened consciousness of un

happiness, while the ruling minds that should regulate their tempers are elsewhere.

Yet this is but the lighter shade of the evil. Imagine them exposed, as it sometime happens, to the excitement of the scene. If the party is not very large, mother consents that they should just appear. Now, here is a new and wonderful happiness. The little casuists are busy to know in what it consists. Varied and splendid costumes strike their eye. Ah! fine dress must be happiness. Will they henceforth be more content with their own simple garb, or more likely to esteem humble virtue, in plain attire? They see many rich viands. These are surely a species of happiness. Their appetites are solicited, either to be repelled, or to be indulged at the expense of health and simplicity of taste. If they have been adorned and exhibited for the occasion, they will be familiarized to the dangerous nutriment of flattery. "How pretty!" "What beautiful creatures!" will be the exclamations of the unthinking, or of the sycophants who wish to ingratiate themselves with the parents. The little wondering heart lifts up its valve, and receives the stimulant. Its humility and chastened resolves are put to flight. Affectation and admiration of self, prematurely enter. The tare is not only among the wheat, but before it. If the little beings have not forfeited their frankness, ten to one but you

may hear, in words, as well as in conduct, "I don't love to do as I am told, nor to get my lesson, and it is no matter, for I am a pretty and a beautiful creature."

But the principle of display is not more destructive to the natural and happy simplicity of childhood, than the routine of fashionable visiting to the welfare of true hospitality. The more artificial and ostentatious we become, the farther we recede from that hospitality which Reason sanctions as a virtue, and the voice of Inspiration enjoins as a duty. In ancient times it flourished like a vigorous plant. Beneath its branches the traveller found shelter from the noon-day sun, and covert from the storm.

Yet in proportion as nations have advanced in refinement, they have neglected its culture. They may, indeed, have hedged it about with ceremonies, or encumbered it with trappings. But its verdure has been suffered to fade, and its root to perish. Like the stripling shepherd, it has drooped beneath the gorgeous armour of royalty. Among the smooth stones of the brook, it would better have found the defence that, it needed.

Under the oak at Mamre, it sat with the patriarch, and entertained angels. It lingered amid oriental climes, as in a congenial atmosphere, and has never utterly forsaken the tent of the

wandering Arab. With a cowled head, it shrouded itself in cloisters, and for ages neither pilgrim or mendicant touched the bell at the convent gate in vain. The chosen people in the infancy of their nation, revered its injunctions, for they were twined with the most tender and thrilling recollections, and fortified by a command from Jehovah: "The Lord our God loveth the stranger; love ye, therefore, the stranger, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."

The Moslem, amid his ferocity and despotism, regards the rites of hospitality. He expresses his sense of the solemnity of its requisitions, by the proverb anciently incorporated with his language, "when the stranger saith alas! the heart of Allah is wounded." Some uncivilized nations have offered a rude homage at its shrine. The roving tribes of the North American forests spread their only blanket for the stranger's bed. They set before him the last morsel of food, though their households are in danger of famine. When the Old World paid its first visit to the New, the Mexicans saluted the men of Spain with clouds of fragrant incense, not knowing how soon it was to be quenched in their own blood. The modern South American Republicks still welcome their guests with the simple offering of a fresh flower.

Most of the refined nations of our own times

confide the usages of hospitality to the keeping of the gentler sex. Especially, in this new Western World, the household gods, those Lares and Penates of the Romans, are cordially entrusted to our care. Elevated as we now are, by intellectual advantages, beyond all previous example, it might rationally be expected that a degree of lustre and dignity, heretofore unknown, would dignify social intercourse. Still, we see it very prominently identified with the pleasures of the table. To make the satisfactions of the palate the principal tests of hospitality, seems to accord with a less refined state of society, or to augur some destitution of intellectual resource.

Would our ladies set the example of less elaborate entertainments, of less exuberant feasting, more room would be left for the mental powers to expand, and the feelings to seek interchange, in conversation. At least, they might save their husband's purses, their servants' tempers, and themselves a world of fatigue. Let them recollect that it is but a relic of barbarism which they cherish, when they allure their guests to indulgence of appetite, perhaps to hurtful excess. For temptations of the palate, though they may be multiplied by the hospitable lady, out of pure benevolence, cannot be yielded to with impunity, by all whom her invitations thus expose. Her skill in culinary compounds may wound the