How can we sit in the beautiful halls and panelled boudoirs of the old people, and not be thankful to them for having made them so charming? How can we walk in the avenues they planted, pick the flowering shrubs they grouped and bedded, and not be grateful to them? To plant a tree is a most unselfish work, for very few men live to see the trees they have planted reach such a size as to give pleasure to themselves. Men plant for their sons and grandsons; and their sons and grandsons who enjoy these trees should think for a moment of those to whose forethought they owe them. I confess I like, when I have enjoyed the beauty of some avenue, or clump of stately trees, to look at the picture of the planter of them, and say, "Thank you, dear old man, for the pleasure you have given to me, and will give to my children after me." We have something yet to learn from the Chinese. The only religion of the Celestials is the worship of their ancestors. Every race probably inherits some truth that it can and is destined to impart to the world. The Chinese lack the deeper vision which can look up to the great Father of spirits above, but yet from them we may acquire thought of and love for our forebears. "They are all gone into a world of light, And I alone sit lingering here! Their very memory is fair and bright, And my sad thoughts does clear. It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast, Like stars upon some gloomy grove; Or those faint beams in which this hill is dressed After the sun's remove." So sang Vaughan, a poet of the Restoration; and if one attempts it one can feel with him, that it is a pleasure and a rest to think of, and cultivate affection for, those of our family who belong to the past. In many an old mansion the story goes that an ancestor or ancestress _walks_ there, is to be seen occasionally between the glimpses of the moon visiting the old house, and generally as foretoken of some event intimately concerning the family. Such a story is common enough. We think that possibly these ancient ghosts may reappear to acquaint themselves how we are getting on, but it never occurs to us to visit them, and walk in spirit their desolate region, and cheer them with a kindly expression, and a word of good-will. Well, I think that a set of family portraits does help one to that, does link us somehow to these dead forefathers, and serves as a vehicle of mental communication between us.