On the historic page, the Field of the Cloth of Gold makes a brilliant episode indeed; but while Homespun performs the actual service, little or nothing is said about that. The ancient Golden Fleece has been liberally talked about in mythologic history; our Golden Fleece is genuine Homespun, and that only. And we find, too, in the Greek story a great deal said in praise of the wife of Ulysses, because she pursued her spinning with such ceaseless industry; but an exceedingly small measure of panegyric is heaped on the good dames in our farm-houses of thirty years ago, because they stood at their wheels and spun the thread at home with such patience and faith.

It gives us a special delight to reflect that some of our greatest men were men of genuine homespun, altogether domestic and simple in their character. Bred in the heart and centre of strong domestic influences, they held on by them affectionately to the last. ster wrote home from Washington, while carrying on his broad shoulders the burdens

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of the State Department, for some of those beans to bake which he thought could be got nowhere out of New England. Jefferson's "Garden Book" lets us fully into the secret of his devotion to home, as his familiar letters to his daughters disclose his longings for an early return to its sincere pleasures. John Taylor of Caroline dressed in the native homespun throughout his public career, his character remaining to the last the very touchstone of simplicity and truthfulness.

The history of a household is as well worth writing as that of a kingdom, any day. Household economy is the hint and germ of the science of political economy itself. We do not see why it is not as distinctive a mark of character to be born in homespun as "in the purple"; and it is certain that more valuable men have emerged from the former than from the latter.

A dusty realm indeed must be the human heart that loves the World better than Home politeness rather than truth others more than its own. The man in whom the do

mestic feeling awaits development, is yet to discover the other hemisphere of his being. Home-life and home-love are English, exclusive and nowise cosmopolitan; they take hold of the soil itself, and, like ivy and roses, climb to the very roof-tree. Until a man is fairly domesticated, he has not got a footing; he has not yet become his own, but is still another's; he is locked out from the enjoyment of wealth of which he is the rightful owner, unaware all the while that he carries the key in his own hand.