much happiness had throughout been tinged with sorrow. Henceforth his life, even when he recovered from his wife's death, and had married Caroline Bowles, was one of subdued happiness; and, as Prof. Dowden says, "if any future lay before him, it was a cloud lifeless and gray."

His second marriage was in every way suitable, because he had known Caroline Bowles for twenty years; and having long been in constant correspondence with her, a warm and lasting friendship had sprung up between them. What little remained of life he therefore gave to her, and she, by her literary tastes and sympathetic heart, used all her influence to cheer what otherwise would doubtless have been a forlorn and cheerless existence.

Some idea of her high character may be gathered from the womanly letter she wrote to him when his life was daily drawing near the end—

"I bless God that you are supported, as you assuredly are, by Himself. What arm but His could bear you up under the crushing weight you are appointed to bear! But for His sake do not think of sending from you your dear filial comforters. You say you sometimes think you should be as well without them. It would be a tempting of Providence to isolate yourself so unnaturally."

One of the chief charms of biography is that it shows us how simple and sweet and strong are the affections of good men and women, the leaven of loyal and tender love making the whole loaf of existence sweet.

In thy face, dear wife," said Bunsen, when dying, "I have seen the face of God."

Emily Chubbuck, the third wife of that remarkable man, Adoniram Judson, wrote from Burmah, after her marriage to him, that she had often wondered at the devotion to him of such women as Ann Hasseltine and Sarah Boardman, his first and second partners. "But," she naïvely remarked, "I wonder no longer. With such a man any woman is perfectly blessed."

The lives of the Gurneys of Earlham, that great Quaker family, who so rejoiced in good works, and of whom came Elizabeth Fry of sainted memory, and Samuel and Joseph Gurney, the eminent philanthropists, are fruitful in instances of marriages which were little short of heavenly in their unclouded felicity.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert furnished in their marriage a proof that the highest worldly station is not incompatible with happiness which would make delightful the lowliest cottage.

Owing to the singularly ill-judged method of James Anthony Froude, the world in general has come to fancy that the union of Thomas and Jane Carlyle was ill-starred and uncongenial.

From a deep comprehension of the peculiarities of the Scottish character I credit the apparent crustiness of the sage to the dourness which in his countrymen overlies a deep tenderness of nature and an unswerving constancy. He and Jane had

both vocabularies of their own, and they were apt to write more than they would have said in sober words, but the two loved and on the whole suited one another. On her tombstone in Haddington Church is this epitaph, a beautiful tribute from him who knew her best and missed her most:

"In her bright existence she had more sorrows than are common; but also a soft invincibility, a clearness of discernment, and noble loyalty of heart, which

are rare.

Life's stormy sea, by storms is often swept,

But sunlight breaks, and we are safely kept.

For forty years she was the true and ever-loving helpmate of her husband, and by act and word unweariedly forwarded him, as none else could, in all of the works that he did or attempted. She died at London, April 21, 1866, suddenly snatched away from him, and the light of his life as if gone out.

The Wives of Great Men.

The great man stands boldly before the world. His wife is potential, but little seen. In the recently published Family Letters of the Rossettis, the editor, Mr. William G. Rossetti, takes occasion to pay a filial tribute to the mother, who filled a large place in his love. As the wife of an artist and the mother of a family of artists and poets, this lady was encumbered with care, for though brains in plenty were in the circle, they were not largely endowed with practical talents.

A remark attributed to her, to the effect that she had longed for intellectual keenness in her husband and children, but sometimes wished that they had also had more common sense, reminded me of the pithy expression of an American lady, whose daughter had married a well-to-do merchant. She said, “We have never had anything but genius in the family. It will be a change to have a little money,

too."

The biographer of Dr. Holmes calls attention to the tact, charm, ability and exquisite unselfishness of Mrs. Holmes, who, during a long and happy married life, made her husband's success possible by the constancy with which she kept the home atmosphere radiant and serene, the comfort she maintained in the household, and the ease with which she enabled her husband to pursue his own occupations. Not long ago, in a drawing-room company composed of elegant society women, I heard an eminent clergyman say of his wife, "She has always stood between me and the world. She has made it possible for me to be a public teacher. A thousand interruptions, a thousand difficulties are every week removed from my path by her gentle and efficient aid!"

It would seem that a great man more than any other, needs a loving and unselfish comrade in his wife. Princess Bismarck thus aided her husband by loyal companionship and self-sacrificing support. Mrs. Gladstone has been as a ministering angel to the "Grand Old Man," since the years when he and she were young together. The theory of the "new woman" would put aside the lovely old-fashioned ideal of wifehood which is founded in the primitive needs of the race. But theories aside, in plain daily life, men require the comforting, sustaining and stimulating companionship of congenial natures in their wives, and both great men and commonplace men seem alike in this.

"W. has been writing his book," said a friend to me, and I have been mounting guard before the door. I have seen the visitors, quieted the children, given him the sort of breakfasts and dinners he likes best, played the music he prefers, kept the machinery from creaking. I have a large share in W.'s books, though nobody ever knows what it is."

Mr. D. was at the turning-point of his career," said Mr. D.'s partner, speaking of a man who had recently died in very sad circumstances, "but he never held up his head after his wife was taken away. He lost ambition, and things slipped away from his grasp. If she had lived, D. would have been known far and wide as a successful man. But he really ceased growing and stopped caring for things when he lost her.'

It is an interesting study, this of the relations of men and women. And it may almost be taken for granted that a truly successful man in any line must have an able, but a very unselfish wife, one who does not mind being merged in the white light which aureoles her husband.

Homely Flowers and Simple Hearts.

In the spring, when everything is awakening to new life, hepaticas smiling in the woods, arbutus lifting its sweet, shy face from the shelter of the pine needles, leaves unfolding on the bare trees, the world full of beauty, one's heart turns lovingly to the familiar dooryard bloom. The dear old-fashioned things that come every year, that the mother tends and the child may pick, that make the bouquet for the sick chamber and fill the basket on the sacred desk, that offer themselves for the breastknot of the youth who goes courting and for the posy of the Puritan maiden on her way to the meeting house-who does not feel a new thrill of gladness when the May days bring them back? Chief among dooryard favorites is the sturdy lilac, with its plumy sheaves, its honeyed fragrance, its fidelity to its old dwelling-place. Call it a grandmother's flower if you will, for it has the purity, the strength, the endurance, the resolution, the fibre which made our New England grandmothers queenly and saintly.

Speaking of homely flowers leads us to a thought of the charm there is in homely virtues. An elderly woman passed through a room in which I was sitting the other day-a woman evidently beyond her sixtieth year. She was what is technically styled as "made-up" to look very much younger, and with the tinge of rouge, the pearl-tint of powder, the delicate penciling of eyebrows and the shadowing of eyelids, united with a wonderful coiffure and a costume fit for a girl in her twenties, the lady fondly fancied that she could cheat the observer into thinking her still in the flower of her youth. Vain delusion! The elaborate toilet deceived no one, and the pity of it all was that it obscured in the minds of some whom she met the real grace and charm which were the woman's own, notwithstanding her petty vanities.

One longed to say to such a woman, "Do not try to regain that which has evaded you, do not even seek to keep the semblance of it. Emulate the honest garden flower, and be what you are. At every age the good woman is fascinating, and fifty, sixty or seventy has as many claims on the homage of society as eighteen has or twenty-five."

As a rule, the desperate effort to simulate youth defeats itself. Attention is called by cosmetics and an exaggerated style of dress to the very points which the foolish matron would prefer to have unnoticed. Health, good-temper, self-poise, calmness, serenity, the gentleness and repose which are won by conquest over trial and by the disciplinary experiences of life, are the birthright of middle age, as grace, eagerness, ambition, fire and fervor belong to the period of youth.

Have we strayed from our text? It may look so to you, dear reader, but the sturdy bloom of the spring brings to my memory, each recurring year, a picture of one so gracious, so energetic, so inspiring, that it is hard to believe she