scourge. It is there that the "thorn and the brier," to use the elegant simile of the prophet, or the “myrtle and the fir-tree are reared, which are, in future time, to be the ornament and defence, or the deformity and misery of the land." These words are proved truthful by reference to the present condition of society, and to the records of past history. Ancient Greece and Rome placed the highest renown on the forum and the battle-field-in the career of the senator and the soldier. And it was their boast, as we learn from the classic writers of antiquity, that sons were nobly trained in the family for the service of their country. The studious were encouraged to aspire after the fame of the scholar and orator, and the ardent and fearless to win the laurels that wreathe the brow of the warrior. The Grecian and Roman both entertained false notions of human glory, and were impelled by a wicked ambition in their efforts to win it, but the fact to which reference is had clearly proves the important relation which the family holds to the state. And did space permit, the annals of Greece and Rome might furnish illustrious examples of statesmen and generals, reared in the quiet family with special reference to the offices which they after wards filled with honor.

The Family is a state in minature, of which the father is king. It contains all the clements of the body politic, developed and developing. There are the future artizens and agriculturists who will wield the utensils, the statesmen and rulers who will hold the destinies, and the ministers and conservators of truth who will watch the altars of our land. There is every passion, and hope, and feeling which ever kindled in the bosom of humanity, existing, indeed, in embryo, but fast growing into vigorous and manly exercise for a nation's weal or wo. When John Adams was engaged in the instruction of youth, in the city of Worcester, in the year 1756, he said, "that it awakened in his heart peculiar interest to regard his school as the world in mina

ture-that before him were the land's future presidents, governors, legislators, divines and counsellors. He had only to imagine, what might prove truc, that this one was a prospective ruler, and that one a legislator, and the other a minister, in order to stimulate him to that course of effort without which youth for those respective spheres would be lost." His remarks would have been equally true if he had spoken them of the Family. The following is an illustration of this truth. In the year 1782 there were born in four families, residing in three different states, four distinguished American statesmen, viz. : Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Lewis Cass, and Martin Van Buren. Then, those families were undistinguished from the great multitude of tamilies around them. Yet, as we now regard the influence which those gifted statesmen have exerted in the councilhalls of the nation, we learn that those families sustained a very important relation to our government. Within them were prospective legislators and statesmen, daily receiving impressions to fit or unfit them for the important trust to which they were unconsciously advancing. Could thoso parents have been gifted with a prophet's ken to discern tho public carcer of those whom they were disciplining, perhaps, with too careless hand, it would have rolled upon them an overwhelming burden of responsibility. They would have had a most impressive view of the relation they sustained to the national government. And what family can say positively, that it may not hold a relation to it of equal importance!

Not less important is the relation of the family to the state in respect to evil. To send abroad unprincipled and irresponsible agents to trample upon human laws, and set at defiance civil authorities, is a very undesirable relation to sustain. The eye may now rest upon the wretched victims of vice and crime, whose lives are more than a perpetual nuisance to society, a dreadful blight and curse upon its

dearest interests, living to peril the peace and purity of the world, to spread the elements of discord earth-wide, and to introduce the reign of anarchy and moral death. To be tho occasion of sending one such pest into society may well attach a fearful obligation to the household bond. To hazand thus, by proxy, the peace and prosperity of the Com monwealth, and corrupt the morals of communities by an irresponsible progeny, is an issue from which every noblo and patriotic parent desires to be delivered.

The stability of government resides in the virtue of the people. A territory stretching from sea to sea, a fertil soil, and exhaustless mines of gold and silver, do not make a people prosperous. Proud and populous cities, wise and prudential statutes, mighty armies and navies triumphing on land and ocean, do not ensure a permanent government. Nor, even, can education, and the spirit of true liberty, alone, sustain a nation, and transmit its institutions unimpaired to posterity. This is donc, if done at all, by the tried virtue of the people. Good citizens, and not wealth, power, or political organizations, give stability to government. Parties may organize, education and politics combine, and every possible intellectual, political and secular agency cooperate for the success and glory of a nation, but its days of prosperity are numbered if there be not a goodly sharo of virtue in the hearts of the people. So speaks reason and observation. So speaks the past. So speaks the present. There is but one voice, and one experience, and one illus tration upon this subject. History declares in the rise and progress, the decline and fall of governments, that their sta bility resides in the virtue of the people.

But when, where, and how are good citizens made? Are they made after the adult character is formed? By no means. What kind of citizens they shall be is determined before they attain to manhood. While under parental discipline it is decided whether they will be loyal or not. Here, if ever,

they learn that obedience, and cultivate that virtue, which are the sure promise of loyalty to the state. He, who is disobedient in the family, will be likely to be disobedient in the state. If he has no respect for parental government, he will have none for civil government. If he defies a parent, he will defy a ruler. In short, the discipline which is required to make him a good son, is necessary to make him a good citizen. Early in life, long before he understands the nature of his duties as a member of society, this training of his heart to virtue must commence. To be virtuous in man

If his carly life is cor

hood, he must be virtuous in youth. rupt, there is very little hope that his later life will be pure. Hence, if the permanency of a government resides in the virtue of the people, and if the people are virtuous only when their carly discipline was correct, then, the success of a nation depends upon the character of its families.

Much has been written concerning the causes of crime and pauperism in our land. Foreign emigration, intemperance, loose laws, judicial leniency, all have been loaded with the curse of creating this mass of corruption and want. But these are only secondary causes. The true, original cause lies back of them, in the family. The great masses of delinquents crowding our Alms Houses, Reform Schools, and Penitentiaries are furnished by undisciplined, godless families, or very defective religious ones. They come not from the welltrained households of rural or metropolitan districts. Hence, the remarks of Dr. Payson: "Could we trace the puble and private evils which infest our otherwise happy country backward to their source, I doubt not, we should find the most of them proceed from a general neglect of the education of thildren. With this neglect those parents are chargeable, who suffer their children to indulge, without restraint, those sinful propensities, to which childhood and youth are but too Fubject. Among the practices which have this dangerous. tendency are a quarrelsome, malicious disposition, disregard

to truth, excessive indulgence of their appetites, neglect of the Bible and religious instruction, profanation of the Satbath, impious and indecent language, wilful disobedience, improper associations, want of scrupulous integrity, and idleness, which is the parent of every evil." True, we find an immediate cause of much of the sin and degradation we witness in the drinking and gaming saloons, the theatres and brothels where the vicious congregate; but then, low many resort to these dens of infamy for the very lack of that carly training which is so salutary to lead in virtue's pathway! Foreign emigration pours a host of paupers and criminals upon our shores, poor, wretched, vicious men and women, to fill our alms-houses and jails; but come they not from lands, where a well-trained, christian family is almost unknown? Were they not born and bred in the midst of vice and crime, and disciplined to quench the risings of every noble aspiration? And are they not now the members of households in which there is scarcely any recognition of the duties and responsibilities of the family relation? So that, while we lament over the evils of foreign emigration, we are compelled to say that we are suffering from such an emigration, because other lands are the abodes of such families. After granting all the exceptions possible, we are compelled to concede, that the true, original cause of pauperism. and crime is found in the family.

We have spoken of the strong attachment of mankind to Home. This makes men patriotic. It is a golden link which binds their hearts to their native land when travelling in foreign countries. It is a note of alarm when the pestilence sweeps along the shores, loved ones being the first to rise before the mind's eye. So, when the tramp of invading armies has been heard, a thought of home has inspirited the volunteer, or the enrolled soldier, more than the loud battlecry "to arms!" Dear relatives, whose hopes and happiness depend upon the issue of the conflict, are the first