“In your first issue you raise the question, ‘How large ought a Home to be?’ This is a question of great interest to all; and I trust the accumulated answers you will receive will aid in its solution. “I have lived in homes varying in numbers from one (the bachelor’s home) to several hundred; and my experience and observation lead me to regard one hundred and twenty-five as about the right number to form a complete home. I would not have less than seventy-five nor more than one hundred and fifty. In my opinion a Home should minister to all the needs of its members, spiritual, intellectual, social, and physical. This ordinary monogamic homes cannot do; hence resort is had to churches, colleges, club-rooms, theatres, etc.; and in sparsely settled regions of country, people are put to great inconvenience and compelled to go great distances to supply cravings as imperative as the hunger for bread. This view alone would not limit the number of persons constituting a Home; but I take the ground that in a perfect Home there will be a perfect blending of all interests and perfect vibration in unison of all hearts; and of course thorough mutual acquaintance. My experience and observation convince me that it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to secure these results in a family of over one hundred and fifty members. “In simply a monetary view it is undoubtedly best to have large Homes of a thousand or more; but money should not have great weight in comparison with a man’s spiritual, intellectual, and social needs.—D. E. S.” FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER LXXII. Venice, 9th November, 1876, 7 morning. I have set my writing-table close to the pillars of the great window of the Ca’ Ferro, which I drew, in 1841, carefully, with those of the next palace, Ca’ Contarini Fasan. Samuel Prout was so pleased with the sketch that he borrowed it, and made the upright drawing from it of the palace with the rich balconies, ‘which now represents his work very widely as a chromolithotint. [107] Between the shafts of the pillars, the morning sky is seen pure and pale, relieving the grey dome of the church of the Salute; but beside that vault, and like it, vast thunderclouds heap themselves above the horizon, catching the light of dawn upon them where they rise, far westward, over the dark roof of the ruined Badia;—but all so massive, that, half an hour ago, in the dawn, I scarcely knew the Salute dome and towers from theirs; while the sea-gulls, rising and falling hither and thither in clusters above the green water beyond my balcony, tell me that the south wind is wild on Adria. “Dux inquieti turbidus Adriæ.”—The Sea has her Lord, and the sea-birds are prescient of the storm; but my own England, ruler of the waves in her own proud thoughts, can she rule the tumult of her people, or, pilotless, even so much as discern the thunderclouds heaped over her Galilean lake of life?