Nor does the beauty end with the day. "Is it nothing to sleep under the canopy of heaven, where we have the globe of the earth for our place of repose, and the glories of the heavens for our spectacle?" For my part I always regret the custom of shutting up our rooms in the evening. as though there was nothing worth seeing outside. What, however, can be more beautiful than to "look how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold," or to watch the moon journeying in calm and silver glory through the night. And even if we do not feel that "the man who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight, has been present like an Archangel at the creation of light and of the world," still "the stars say something significant to all of us and each man has a whole hemisphere of them, if he will but look up, to counsel and befriend 1 Seneca.. 2 Emerson, him"; for it is not so much, as Helps elsewhere observes, "in guiding us over the seas of our little planet, but out of the dark waters of our own perturbed minds, that we may make to ourselves the most of their significance." Indeed, “How beautiful is night! A dewy freshness fills the silent air; No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain, In full-orbed glory yonder moon divine The desert circle spreads, Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky; I have never wondered at those who worshipped the sun and moon. On the other hand, when all outside is dark and cold; when perhaps "Outside fall the snowflakes lightly; Through the night loud raves the storm; In my room the fire glows brightly, And 'tis cosy, silent, warm. 1 Helps. 2 Southey. "Musing sit I on the settle By the firelight's cheerful blaze, Humming long-forgotten lays."1 For after all the true pleasures of home are not without, but within; and "the domestic man who loves no music so well as his own kitchen clock and the airs which the logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, has solaces which others never dream of." We love the ticking of the clock, and the flicker of the fire, like the sound of the cawing of rooks, not so much for any beauty of their own as for their associations. It is a great truth that when we retire into ourselves we can call up what memories we please. "How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, 1 Heine, trans. by E. A. Bowring. Emerson. 8 Woodworth It is not so much the "Fireside enjoyments, And all the comforts of the lowly roof,"1 but rather, according to the higher and better ideal of Keble, "Sweet is the smile of home; the mutual look, When hearts are of each other sure; Sweet all the joys that crowd the household nook, The haunt of all affections pure." In ancient times, not only among savage races, but even among the Greeks themselves, there seems to have been but little family life. What a contrast was the home life of the Greeks, as it seems to have been, to that, for instance, described by Cowley-a home happy "in books and gardens," and above all, in a "Virtuous wife, where thou dost meet And in her mind the wisest books." No one who has ever loved mother or 1 Cowper. wife, sister or daughter, can read without astonishment and pity St. Chrysostom's description of woman as a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly fascination, and a painted ill." In few respects has mankind made a greater advance than in the relations of men and women. It is terrible to think how women suffer in savage life; and even among the intellectual Greeks, with rare exceptions, they seem to have been treated rather as housekeepers or playthings than as the Angels who make a Heaven of home. 66 The Hindoo proverb that you should never strike a wife, even with a flower," though a considerable advance, tells a melancholy tale of what must previously have been. In The Origin of Civilisation I have given many cases showing how small a part family affection plays in savage |