crated to the Lord.

He gave me this most precious gift, and I strive to carry it to him, and to beseech him that I may really possess it as his gift, as a bond of deeper gratitude and love to the Giver, and as a rich talent to be used in his service. Already we have begun some religious work, and every morning we read the Scriptures together. 'Bless the Lord, O my soul, and let all that is within me bless his holy name.""

To these extracts I will venture to add one from Bishop Dupanloup's wise little book "La Femme studieuse :" "C'est d'avance et dès les premiers jours de leur mariage, que de jeunes époux doivent méditer de concert un plan de vie, plan large et sérieux, embrassant l'ensemble: les devoirs mutuels, la carrière, la position du chef de famille dans son pays, les enfants, leur avenir; les relations sociales; la vie privée; l'âge mûr; enfin la vieillesse et la mort; l'existence, en un mot, dans ses grandes phases. Et c'est avec ces grandes lignes que tous leurs actes, tout d'abord et dès le commencement, doivent être mis en accord. De cette façon seulement une femme pourra assurer la bonté et l'unité de sa vie, et éviter les tristes désaccords qui se font dans une existence abandonnée à l'aventure, entre la jeune femme et la femme en cheveux blancs. Tandis qu'au contraire, si la vie est bien ordonnée, il peut y avoir un accord merveilleux entre les âges différents que Dieu fait passer sur sa tête, et qu'elle doit successivement traverser, répandant le charme et le bien autour d'elle."

CHAPTER VIII.

Travel.

TRAVEL brings its special "moments." It is much when one who has lived for years in a narrow circle first leaves the limits of early life and passes to a different sphere and to wider interests. What a moment is that of first foreign travel! What a moment to many first to behold the sea! though, like Gebir, one may have murmured,

"Is this the mighty ocean? is this all ?"

But first to leave the old shores of Albion, and to sail across the waters to new scenes, which almost seemed to present, as it were, the life of another planet; first to see the low-lying shore of Holland, with the wind-mills and the boundless pastures, or "the palms and temples of the South!" Most people who visit Jerusalem, first see it with the feelings which Tasso so eloquently ascribes to the army of the first Crusaders. Very often a keen intellectual expansion is afforded by foreign travel. After Lord Macaulay had lived in India-we believe he had meditated returning there again at the last-there was a greater richness and expansiveness in his style. After Burke had thoroughly worked through and elaborated Indian subjects, his gorgeous rhetoric flowered to the uttermost. It may indeed be said that some knowledge and familiarity with Oriental subjects is absolutely necessary for any completeness of mental vision. Otherwise only one hemisphere of life and thought is visible to us.

This is the broadest aspect. But the subject of travel may

G

be brought within very narrow limits, expanding or diminishing with each man's experience.

There is no doubt that home and foreign travel, and, indeed, change of any kind, is one of the most beneficial agencies that can be brought to bear on our moral and physical well-being. Sir Henry Holland, in one of his medical essays, very strongly advocates change of scene and air in the case of a supposed patient. If he can not travel he had better go from one room to another, and if he can not leave his room the furniture of the room had better be changed. When all medical art has failed, the simple rational proceeding of a little travel has wrought wonders. The world is diseased and out of joint, and in one sense we are all valetudinarians. Perhaps no man is very long free from distempered fancies and worrying thoughts, and, to use Baconian language roughly, his private den is soon invaded by unpleasing idols. A man ordinarily finds that he is able to cast away much worry and fret by an easy walk into the clear sunshine and liberal air. Travel is an extension of this. Before the welcome train has borne you across country to the next station, the cares and anxieties which seemed so oppressive shrink to their petty local and provincial measure. The eye is pleased by shifting changes, the mind animated by the variety of objects, and, without minutely analyzing the cause, in most cases a good result is easily perceivable. It is to be carefully observed that a due measure and proportion should be maintained in reference to rest and travel. There is many a medicine an over-dose of which produces the very effects which it was intended to obviate. One who is always traveling loses the capacity of the enjoyment of travel. The ever-varying apartment which receives him night after night becomes as monotonous as the familiar four walls and a ceiling of which he had been tired, and each fresh landscape is beheld with the

satiety of one who is growing very weary with his inspection of a gallery of pictures. The most welcome change is that of rest and permanence, and the most brilliant flash of travel that which lands us at home again.

Human unity is made up of pairs of contradictions. Mankind, according to a phrase which Coleridge borrowed from the German, are made up of Aristotelians and Platonists, and, according to Mr. Gladstone, of dog-lovers and dog-haters. These contradictions may be multiplied to any extent, and the traveling and the non-traveling will hold as good as any other. There are many who, according to the saying, never feel at home except when they are abroad. Their eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing. They are almost Cain-like; they wander like the Wandering Jew. They have tasted of travel, and the taste has left an unsatiable lust of locomotion. They have

"Become a name

For always roaming with an hungry heart . .
Yet all experience an arch were thro'

Gleams that untraveled world."

Now, you will find many persons who have a very horror of traveling. For them a distant horizon has no charm or meaning. The instinct of adhesiveness is strong upon them. Only for the briefest flight can they exalt their minds beyond petty and local interests. It is chiefly those who make it their business to know something of the ways and thoughts of the extreme poor who see this phase of incurious and inert life. I have very repeatedly met this: notably, I remember, on the south coast of Cornwall, where again and again the nearest market-town was the extreme limit on the west, and all the east was gloriously terminated at Plymouth. There were the flammantia mania mundi. All beyond was void or limbo. Now, while remembering that the instinct of travel should

work within due limitations, and that there are worse forms of absenteeism than the common notion of it presents, to those who believe that the cultivation of our intellectual powers is only second in importance to moral obligations, this travel itself becomes little else than a moral obligation binding on the non-traveling part of the community.

And if this seems hard on the non-travelers, I am sure that this duty, like every other, is quite possible of fulfillment. Any home-staying person may easily make experiment of this. Let any such person make his home the centre of a circle, no radius of which shall extend beyond the manageable limits of a day's expedition. I am sure that he will soon be able to draw up a list of interesting localities, for hardly a square mile of our crowded historic England is free from such. Nothing is more commonly observed-and each such instance implies a real reproach-than that strangers will often come many miles to view what an inhabitant has never made any effort to examine. Many a man who now leads a mere vegetable life might find a constant source of interest and change in trying to make his survey of an interesting neighborhood accurate and exhaustive. If we employ this little talent aright, a larger talent will, doubtless, be confided to us. This brings us to the comparative question of home or continental travel. Now home travel is almost the instinct of duty and patriotism. Some amount of home travel is absolutely necessary in order to enable us to comprehend this England of ours aright. We are not yet arrived at that utterly stereotyped condition of society to which certain cosmopolitans think that we are come. Still there are many angular, or rather very triangular, differences between Lancashire, Kent, and Cornwall. The people of the Orkney Isles and the people of the Scilly Isles are, I believe, very much like each other, but many shades of difference lie between the two extremes. There are very many