"He is a parricide to his mother's name, And with an impious hand, murthers her fame, Who wrongs the praise of woman; that dares write Libels on saints, or with foul ink requite The milk they lent us." When one becomes indifferent to women, to children and young people, he may know that he is superannuated, and has withdrawn from whatsoever is sweetest and purest in human existence. One of the happiest rewards of age is the enjoyment of children. And when these inherit one's better gifts and graces, sinking the worse, or omitting them altogether, what can be added to fill the cup of parental gratitude and delight? I fail to comprehend how the old and young folks are to enjoy a future heaven together, unless they have learned to partake in the enjoyments of this. Shall we picture future separate heavens for them? Sing, sing, the immortals, The ancients of days, Ever crowding the portals Of earth's populous ways; The babes ever stealing Into Eden's glad feeling; The fore-world revealing God's face, ne'er concealing. Sing, sing, the child's fancies, Its graces and glances, Plans, pastimes, surprises, Slips, sorrows, surmises. Youth's trials and treasures, Its hopes without measures, Its labors and leisures; His world all before him, High heaven all o'er him; Life's lengthening story, Opening glory on glory; By age ne'er o'ertaken, By youth near forsaken. Sings none this fair story, But dwellers in its glory; Who would the youth see, A youth he must be; Heaven's kingdom alone To children doth come. The family is the sensitive plant of civility, the measure of culture. Take the census of the homes, and you have the sum total of character and civilization in any community. Sown in the family, the seeds of holiness are here to be cherished and ripened for immortality. Here is the seminary of the virtues, the graces, accomplishments, that adorn and idealize existence. From this college we graduate for better or for worse. This faculty of the affections, this drinking freshly at the springs of genius and sensibility, this intimacy with the loveliest and best in life, is the real schooling, the truest discipline, without which neither mind nor heart flourish; all other advantages being of secondary account; wealth, wit, beauty, social position, books, travel, fellowships, are but sounding names, opportunities of inferior importance, compared with this endowment of personal influences.