If this country increases in virtue and intelligence as it may, there is no end to the wealth which will pour in as the result of our resources of climate, soil, and navigation, and the skill, industry, energy, and enterprise of our countrymen. This wealth, if used as intelligence and virtue dictate, will furnish the means for a superior education to all classes, and every facility for the refinement of taste, intellect, and feeling. Moreover, in this country, labor is ceasing to be the badge of a lower class; so that already it is disreputable for a man to be “a lazy gentleman.” And this feeling must increase, till there is such an equalization of labor as will afford all the time needful for every class to improve the many advantages offered to them. Already, through the munificence of some of our citizens, there are literary and scientific advantages offered to all classes, rarely enjoyed elsewhere. In most of our large cities and towns the advantages of education now offered to the poorest classes, often without charge, surpass what, some years ago, most wealthy men could purchase for any price; and it is believed that a time will come when the poorest boy in America can secure advantages which will equal what the heir of the proudest peerage can now command. The records of the courts of France and Germany, (as detailed by the Duchess of Orleans,) in and succeeding the brilliant reign of Louis the Fourteenth—a period which was deemed the acme of elegance and refinement—exhibit a grossness, a vulgarity, and a coarseness, not to be found among the very lowest of our respectable poor. And the biography of the English Beau Nash, who attempted to reform the manners of the gentry in the times of Queen Anne, exhibits violations of the rules of decency among the aristocracy which the commonest yeoman of this land would feel disgraced in perpetrating. This shows that our lowest classes, at this period, are more refined than were the highest in aristocratic lands a hundred years ago; and another century may show the lowest classes in wealth, in this country, attaining as high a polish as adorns those who now are leaders of good manners in the courts of kings. CHAPTER XIV. THE PRESERVATION OF GOOD TEMPER IN THE HOUSEKEEPER. There is nothing which has a more abiding influence on the happiness of a family than the preservation of equable and cheerful temper and tones in the housekeeper. A woman who is habitually gentle, sympathizing, forbearing, and cheerful, carries an atmosphere about her which imparts a soothing and sustaining influence, and renders it easier for all to do right, under her administration, than in any other situation.