as a preparative for the uses of nourishment and education she has still to perform, has poured into her bosom, and is still each moment pouring, that maternal love with its attendant joy and delight.
Thus we perceive that one of the chief sources of human happiness, is most wisely and mercifully ordained to be in a great degree independent of outward condition. The same is true of most of the other pure springs of man's felicity. They are placed deep, as it were, in the ground of the human heart, so as to be for the most part beyond the reach of external influences. Those fountains are set so deep that the frost of the cold world cannot chill them, nor the heat of its hate or violence dry them up: they flow fresh and perennial from heaven and from God. This is as true of the delights of conjugal affection, as it is of parental. Nay, the storms of adversity only cause the true husband and wife to cling more fondly and warmly to each other; and, thus united, they can defy the blast, having a warmth and peace within themselves, which the world, as it did not give, so cannot take away. And this grand source of human happiness, is, like the other, generally and almost universally diffused, and is in a great degree independent of situation in life. The poor laborer goes to his home, after the toils of the day, and, met at his cottage-door by his cheerful partner and the bright faces of his little ones, he forgets all his troubles. Shutting the door behind him, as he enters, he locks out all hard cares and sharp assailants, and, secure in his home-castle, opens his heart to the full influence of domestic joys. (See the sweet picture in The Cotter's Saturday-Night.) Has the noble, in his domain, or the king in his palace, any more true
