LETTER XI.

HOME.

you

Ir is a dearly bought truth, my dear boy, with which life's experience will furnish you, that there are no pleasures so unmixed, no enjoyments so pure, as those will meet with at home. You will, perhaps, be incredulous to this assertion; at your age, I listened very doubtingly to my monitor, when expatiating upon the same useful theme. But, believe me, I now most readily confirm, as I most strenuously enforce, the domestic lesson then imparted to me. The current of youthful blood flows too rapidly, the fever of youthful passion runs too high, for the sober entertainment of this interesting truth. It will not come home

with all its force to your heart until you shall have experienced the insufficiency of other enjoyments to your real happiness; the instability of other friendships; the insincerity of other professions. The "gold

that glitters is not the most precious;" homely as this proverb is, it will apply to the greater portion of those enjoyments which are sought from home. Pleasure will wear a more alluring form, and seeming friendship hold forth more flattering inducements, but the syren smile of the one will too often lead to the paths of danger, when will look in vain for the helping you hand of the other. “Revocare gradum” is

the ineffectual wish of numbers who have ruined their reputation, and "wasted their substance in riotous living," when they might have partaken, at the same time that they contributed to, the guiltless gratifications of

home.

In such a chequered world as this, there can be no picture drawn without its darker side, but where, to borrow a familiar expression, the heart is in its proper place, and the eye is not disposed to look at life through a distempered medium, you will, I firmly believe, meet with less of sorrow than of satisfaction.

If home hold out so many charms to men of all conditions and circumstances, these charms come doubly recommended to the country clergyman. It is very desirable, nay, absolutely essential, that his pleasures (I use the word clerically) should never lead him far or frequently from his parish. The "parson's week," as it is deridingly termed, is an unsafe latitude wherein to indulge. The house of merriment to day may be the house of mourning to morrow. Joy may illumine its chambers when you leave it, and heaviness may darken them ere you

return.

Death may have set his mark upon that house; suffering may have poured forth her sorrows unpitied and unsolaced; doubt mayh ave been still wavering to the last; and sin still unrepented. A day or an hour will furnish this lesson of mortality—a week is often an eventful period indeed!

But do not mistake me,—I should be truly sorry to make the precept unpalatable by requiring too much. I do not say, ❝ never go from home," but do so rarely; and never without the conviction that your parish is in the custody of some faithful friend. A ready interchange of good offices is one of the characteristics of the clergy of the establishment. Be it your especial care not to abuse the opportunities of occasional absence which this inter-parochial courtesy will afford you.

As home will thus be the centre of all your