has thrown its shadow. The influence of Egeria is felt through the whole circle of her acquaintance;—she encourages the young to high aims and persevering efforts,—she brightens the fading light of the aged, but above all is she a blessing and a glory within her own home. Her husband cannot look on her—to borrow Longfellow’s beautiful thought without “reading in the serene expression of her face, the Divine beatitude, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart.’” Her children revere her as the earthly type of perfect love. They learn, even more from her example than her precept, that they are to live not to themselves, but to their fellow-creatures, and to God in them. She has so cultivated their taste for all which is beautiful and noble, that they cannot but desire to conform themselves to such models. She has taught them to love their country and devote themselves to its advancement—not because it excels all others, but because it is that to which God in his providence united them, and whose advancement and true interest they are bound to seek by all just and Christian methods. In a word, she has never forgotten that they are immortal and responsible beings, and this thought has reappeared in every impression she has stamped upon their minds.
But it is her conduct towards those in a social position inferior to her own, which individualizes most strongly the character of Egeria. Remembering that there are none who may not, under our free institutions, attain to positions of influence and responsibility, she endeavours, in all her intercourse with them, to awaken their self-respect and desire for improvement, and she is ever ready to aid them in the attainment of that desire, and thus to fit them for the performance of those duties that may devolve on them.
“Are you not afraid that Bridget will leave you, if, by your lessons, you fit her for some higher position?” asked a lady, on finding her teaching embroidery to a servant who had shown much aptitude for it.
“If Bridget can advance her interest by leaving me, she shall have my cheerful consent to go. God forbid that I should stand in the way of good to any fellow-creature—above all, to one whom,
