holy land of families, of homes, go to Sweden! Behold everywhere, between mountains and hills, those quiet dwellings, where man enjoys an ennobled life with nature, where, in the bosom of sacred and beautiful relations, the national virtues of Sweden expand and flourish; courage and the fear of God.

And now, since we are on so good a road, let us look in on Adelaide's home. I have called it the "blissful home," and desire earnestly that you too, my reader, should call it so. Let me see, whether I cannot, by the aid of my cousin Beata Everyday's pen (which she left me in her last will), bring this testimony also from your lips.

A clear November morning dawned upon M. On the evening of the day before, Count Alaric had led his beautiful young wife into his ancestral home. As we intend to go into the house, and commit some indiscretions there, let us look round a little in the young Countess's ante-room. No dust on the green carpet; no spot on the clear windows and mirrors. The air is perfumed with mignionette. The breakfasttable covered with a snow-white table-cloth, stands, with its steaming morning beverage, near the sofa. A few beautiful pictures, by Sweden's best artists, ornament the walls. But where, then, are the young people? Ah! there, at the window, stand Alaric and Adelaide, his arm round her waist, her beautiful head resting on his shoulder.

The first snow had fallen during the night, and the lake was spread out like a great white sheet before the stately castle. The tall forest of pine-trees, stretched far around, raising to the clouds their snowwhite summits; and on the other side of the lake, a chain of mountains of extraordinary wildness, was seen. At a distance in the forest, the bold and powerful strokes of the woodman's axe were heard at intervals. A large snow-flake fell now and then through the still air, the sky was clearing up, and the clouds acquiring a deeper purple and gold, until they grew pale all at once before the radiant glance shed upon them by the King of day, while he rose clearly and gloriously from the white bed of the mountains. The earth and the trees were now quickly adorned with diamonds, glittering like a thousand stars, but it was not in rivalry, but in worship and thanksgiving.

And the glorious spectacle was seen by two happy beings. Alaric's eagle glance turned towards the sun, and bore unflinching his radiant beams. Adelaide bowed her head gladly and devoutly before this giver of joy, as if to greet him, and sang;

"To thee I raise my song,
Thou brightly-beaming Sun!
Around thy kingly throne,
Deep in the shadowed night,

Hast thou the dark clouds placed
As thy bond-slaves. Thou seest
Them pray below thee;
But yet thy path is light.
See nature; it is dead.
For night, the spectre's friend,
Upon the meadows pale
Her gloomy shroud has laid.
Many night-lamps are seen
Within the funeral house
;
But thou dost rise again
In glory from the east.
As rose-flower from its bud,
Wak'st the creation up." *

Here Adelaide suddenly stopped, and clasping her hands enthusiastically, exclaimed;

“Ah, in spring! how beautiful must it be here then! when the lake is free, and the sun calls out flower after flower; and all this I shall see, I shall enjoy with thee! O Alaric, how beautiful is life! How sweet it is to live!"

"To live!" repeated Alaric thoughtfully. "And what is it to live?" he asked, looking at Adelaide with a smile.

Adelaide with

"To love," answered warmth, "and to worship Him who has given us love. O, how much less should we enjoy the goods of life, if we had not an All-bounteous Giver to thank for them. I love thee, Alaric, I thank God, and this is to me one, and this is my felicity."

"And I will give thanks for thee, my Adelaide, who art my life's best treasure,' said Alaric, while he pressed her tenderly to his heart, and looked up thankfully to heaven. "But mere emotions are not enough for life, we must "

66

"I know, I know," said Adelaide, interrupting him with a kiss and a roguish smile, we must think, study, make ourselves useful to others, read history, and all that, no! do not be solemn! Do not you see that all wisdom comes from the warmth of the heart. When the sun shines brightly upon the earth, then does she bear her fruits. I love thee; what are life's interests to thee must be so to me. Thy country shall be my country, and thy friends my friends.""

She said this with great seriousness.

"But tell me," she went on, and her face expressed at once a desire for information, and a little love of mischief," are men in our time really happier, with all their learning, than the patriarchs, for example, were in their times. Are the Swedes really better and happier at present, than were our ignorant ancestors many centuries ago?"

"The greater number of men are better and happier," answered Count Alaric. "Science and art have, by their progress, given mankind instruments for their various powers, rich resources for enjoyment, and

* From Tegnér's "Song to the Sun."

against suffering. But the right measure by which to estimate the real progress of mankind is, to cast a glance into the domestic life of former times, and compare it with our own. Through the knowledge of domestic life, the root of civil life, we shall first be able to discern what man has really gained in elevation and felicity. I believe, my Adelaide, after a nearer examination, you would not willingly exchange the present for the past, your house for a tent in the groves of Mamre, even if it were shaded by palm-trees; not even for a knightly castle, although you might there approach the banner of your Viking as he was going forth on his freebooting expeditions, and this even though you might not be obliged to study at all either in the patriarchal or the chivalrous times, and could call your husband, lord."

"My lord and master!" said Adelaide, bowing before Alaric with an enchanting expression of graceful humility, "then, as now, would there be to me one happiness and one honor. But tell me, best Alaric, how comes it, then, that, in these our times, there is not more universal happiness? Are there not even now many unhappy and divided families?"

"There are such," answered Alaric, "but then it is their own fault; all the elements of happiness and of improvement are in life; men are only required to stretch out their hands and take them. Much evil and much misery, it is true, exist in our times; but it is a time of struggle and progress, a great period of transition, and the shout of victory drowns that of wailing. We will read history together in the winter evenings, and you will there see a glorious revelation; the unfolding of God in humanity. You will see how he gives himself to our race in continually brighter splendor, in continually. deeper intuitions, in proportion as we are able to perceive them. You shall see how humanity, approaching nearer to the life of the Eternal, is continually forming itself. more freely and harmoniously; always looking up to heaven more clearly, how its intelligent, its divine form becomes illuminated gradually by the contemplation of the AllGood; thou shalt see this, and thou shalt rejoice; shalt feel thyself happy, that even thou art called to spread God's kingdom upon earth. And thou shalt find, my Adelaide, that the joy of life can best be promoted by its seriousness; yes! that they cannot exist without each other."

Adelaide looked up joyfully, and full of anticipation, to her husband. "I believe I understand you," said she. "And when all who are married shall keep the vows made before God as we shall do, when at last the

whole human race shall form but a single happy family, then will come the time of union between God and his earth, and then will the happy bride exclaim, as I do, O how good is God! Praised be God!""

"O how good is God! Praised be God!" was echoed by Alaric with ardor, while he pressed his wife to his heart.

And thus they both stood, devout, good, and happy, united in earthly and heavenly love, man and wife.

If any of my readers should fear that a love so wholly elevated into life's highest regions could neglect the earthly and temporal; should any careful and amiable woman exclaim, "Whilst they stand here and talk, 'pour se former le cœur et l'ésprit,' the coffee will grow cold!" I must with all humility declare, that, in spite of the discourse at the window, they had hot coffee as well as hot cakes; and I would gladly here present them with a portrait of a housewife, such as I saw in Adelaide, the provident and watchful, who had her eye everywhere, and yet left every one to perform his own task in freedom and peace; the careful one who adorned her simple table with taste, who kept her storehouse orderly and neatly; who was attentive to her noble husband's comfort in the smallest things, who kept the people in her house in order, and in the greatest good-humor, who entered into the smallest occupations of every-day life with animation and pleasure, lending to them poetry and gracefulness.

"Gracefulness and poetry, in the business of every-day life?" interrupted me, much displeased, Madame Greatdealer Tungwin, as I was reading this aloud, and she began to murmur out to me a memorandum of baking, brewing, washing, &c., &c.

And yet it was just as I told you; for order, kindness, and joy were small household gods, in Adelaide's home, which kept watch and ward over all.

"And how did she get possession of them?"

By being happy, and by being worthy of her happiness, because she could love him whom she honored, with whom her life was united; and love, love can raise the heaviest leaven of life.*

And now, my dear reader, could I present to you a more charming picture than that of a loving and happy pair, of a home, of an entrance to heaven, I would bring it before you, to give you pleasure; but as I am not able to do this, therefore, away, pen!

*Most excellent housewives, do the authoress well that good yeast rises of itself, and do not take the justice to believe, that she knows perfectly her metaphor too literally.

As the blessed Mamselle Rönnquist lay on her death-bed from the unblessed cholera, I received from her a packet with the following words:

"As thou art the best friend that I pos

sess in this world, I therefore send thee

herewith some notices of a family with whom I lived the greatest part of my days, and which appeared to me worthy of being penned down. With a somewhat nicer elaboration, they might probably form a continuation of my story of "THE PRESIDENT'S DAUGHTERS." If thou findest in these pages matters to afford interest to the reader, I am persuaded thou wilt set thyself to work them out, and to weave them into a whole. With the age of the actors in the narrative, with the time in which the events occur, as well as with the local circumstances, thou canst deal and order as thou wilt, and allow thyself therein the same

| freedom which I have allowed myself. All this is of minor importance in a little volume which concerns itself only with the history of the heart. Gladly do I bequeath Thou wilt certainly perform it better than to thee the finishing of my feeble sketches. myself, since thou art older; and life is a teaching, a going to school, in which every class. I, too, am about to ascend higher: new year should advance us into a higher I go to learn more, but probably not to write more. Farewell, till the brighter morning! Thine, EMMA."

I have done what Emma Rönnquist desired: how? Thou, friendly reader, mayest decide. Behold!

But who, then, is "I?" thou wilt ask. Dear reader, I am-if thou art good, but especially if thou art unfortunate-with my whole heart,

THY HUMBLE Servant.