We have spoken perhaps too exclusively of the duties and circumstances of the higher classes in this matter of home education. Perhaps it is not altogether unprovidential that we should have been led to do so; for of the various divisions of humanity which our Lord in his parable of the sower represents under the figure of the different accidents that befell the good seed, we know which is, unhappily, the least productive. Jesus himself has explained that the thorns which choked the seed are the “cares, and riches, and pleasures of this life.” Mark well, the _cares_; not only the riches and pleasures, for those self-sought and profitless cares have not the blessings on them which the God-given cares of poverty have. The poor and lowly too often shame their more fortunate brethren by their greater self-devotion and generosity. Their homes, so much less prosperous, are yet often so much more edifying, than ours; and let it be remembered that every act of theirs has, according to the measure of their inferior opportunities, double the merit of any similar act of ours. So with the wholesome reticence which becomes us who have so many opportunities _and neglect them_: we have preferred to point out the beam that is in our own eye, rather than pharisaically to expatiate on the mote that is in our neighbor’s. Yet we would not that any class should deem itself exempt from the duties of home education—duties which, with the poor, have all the added merit of absolute heroism. The poor are told, and doubtless truly, by our teachers and superiors, that their condition should be dear to them because it was that of our Lord himself; but we, their brethren and fellow-pilgrims, should labor to supplement this teaching by making that very condition less irksome to them. Who can dream of Jesus on earth as _not_ being poor and destitute? But, on the other hand, who would dare, were he now on earth, to be behindhand in ministering to his poverty? Now, the alms we _owe_ to his earthly representatives are twofold, _i.e._ spiritual and temporal. Among the former, none are so meritorious as good examples. Have we not in these days a perpetual and most sadly grotesque picture of class aping class, of tawdriness following close on the heels of fashion, of aspiring vanity actually crowding out the legitimate needs of the body? If this system of imitation must be, why not give it a worthy subject to practise upon?