It being, for the time, my prime object to recover some portion of health and strength, I was beyond measure fortunate in the possession of an absolutely ideal home. "'Home! Sweet Home!' Yes. That is the song that goes straight to the heart of every English man and woman. For forty years we never asked Madame Adelina Patti to sing anything else. The unhappy, decadent, Latin races have not even a word in their language by which to express it, poor things! Home is the secret of our honest, British, Protestant virtues. It is the only nursery of our Anglo-Saxon citizenship. Back to it our far-flung children turn, with all their memories aflame. They may lapse into rough ways, but they keep something sound at the core so long as they are faithful to the old home. There is still a tenderness in the voice, and tears are in their eyes, as they speak together of the days that can never die out of their lives, when they were at home in the old familiar places, with father and mother, in the healthy gladness of their childhood."[19] To me home was all this and even more; for not only had it been my earthly Paradise when I was a child, but now, in opening manhood, it was a sanctuary and a resting-place, in which I could prepare myself to face whatever lot the future might have in store for me. That London as well as country may be, under certain conditions, Home, I am well aware. For many natures London has an attractiveness which is all its own. And yet to indulge one's taste for it may be a grave dereliction of duty. The State is built upon the Home, and as a training-place for social virtue, there can surely be no comparison between a home in the country and a home in London. All those educating influences which count for so much in the true home are infinitely weaker in the town than in the country. In a London home there is nothing to fascinate the eye. The contemplation of the mews and the chimney-pots through the back-windows of the nursery will not elevate even the most impressible child. There is no mystery, no dreamland, no Enchanted Palace, no Bluebeard's Chamber, in a stucco mansion built by Cubitt, or a palace of terra-cotta on the Cadogan estate. There can be no traditions of the past, no inspiring memories of virtuous ancestry, in a house which your father bought five years ago and of which the previous owners are not known to you even by name. "The Square" or "The Gardens" are sorry substitutes for the Park and the Pleasure-grounds, the Common and the Downs. Crossing-sweepers are a deserving folk, but you cannot cultivate those intimate relations with them which bind you to the lodge-keeper at home, or to the old women in the almshouses, or to the septuagenarian waggoner who has driven your father's team ever since he was ten years old. Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, or All Saints, Margaret Street, may be beautifully ornate, and the congregation what Lord Beaconsfield called "sparkling and modish"; but they can never have