You have been in Italy. Or you have studied the pictures in the _Louvre_. But the hours which you passed before the canvas whereon was embodied Madonna and child never seemed so agreeable in their realization as they now appear in the glass of memory, as you see the child of your love in the arms of your life companion whose eyes, always bright to yours, and brighter still at your coming after absence, grow brightest when they are lifted from the slumbering innocence beneath them. Men call you rough in your bearing, perhaps. What would they say to see how gently your arms receive the sleeping burthen and transfer it softly to its snowy couch? Your step abroad is heavy and impetuous: how noiselessly it falls upon the floor--_now!_ And how the modulated voice accords with every present thought! You cannot give the child a sweeter sleep by watching over him so intently: and yet you choose to stay. Moments are not so precious to you that at this one household shrine they will become valueless in some most chastened heart-worship! Your infant does not when awake understand the language which your affection addresses: and yet you look with rapture to the future, when the now inquiring eye will become one of understanding; when the cautiously put forth arms will clasp in loving confidence; when the fond endearing name now half intelligibly and doubtingly lisped forth will be uttered in the boldness of love. The shadowy form in the distant cloud over the lake has been listening intently. It listens still; and the face of it bends towards me as if to say, there's a hidden truth and mysterious sympathy in all you say; and yet the language soundeth strangely in these bachelor ears-- Bachelor ears! Listless and deaf, as yet, to all the sweeter human music of our nature. Deafer yet to the clarion call of emulation in the race of life and struggles for power, rank, and fame. Deafest of all to that which spurreth on man to be a king of kings among the great men of his race. You are a father, then, I say; and working in your mental toil by night and day, in the severest and darkest frowning of all professions. But in the crowded senate-room, and in the close committee-chamber; and in the court-room among the multitudes of faces all about, (some of these anticipating in their changing features defeat and disgrace,) there is a _something_ which overrides all agitation: clears the heavy brain, and oils the tongue with every pungency of rhetoric. What is that "something?"