in the suffix to the names of places, such as Waltham, Framingham, Birming- 

 ham, etc. 



The English have, however, improved upon the homes of Their Saxon ances- 

 tors, and in no old country is home considered more sacred, and more abundant 

 labors bestowed to make it pleasant and comfortable, than in England. The 

 noblemen, the merchant princes, and the cotton, woolen, and iron lords of this 

 country make their country homes as inviting as it is possible for money and 

 taste to make them. The mansion is stately and is surrounded by lawns and 

 meadows, trees and flowers, lakes and fountains, orchards and gardens. If no 

 rocks are near to give a variety to the landscape, they are brought from a dis- 

 tance and piled up artificially so as to resemble nature in her most natural phase. 

 The mansion exhibits in its interior the spacious and well furnished kitchen, the 

 long, wainscoted dining-hall with paintings representing hunting scenes, stock 

 of all kinds, game, rish, and fruit; the drawing-room, with musical instruments 

 and elegant furniture, paintings by the old and new masters, representing land- 

 scapes and scenes in history and domestic life ; the family and guest chambers, 

 airy, cosy and comfortable, with beds so elastic and linen so clean that the tired 

 occupants, as they stretch themselves for a night's repose, feel, provided always 

 that they have an easy conscience, that they are enjoying a little foretaste of the 

 rest of Heaven. 



Such is the picture which Irving and others have given us of the rural homes 

 of the English gentry, that we associate with them all that tends, in outward 

 aspect, to refine and embellish life. If the home of the Duke of Devonshire 

 does not foreshadow something of the comfort and blessedness of that mansion 

 to which we are all looking forward with ardent hope and strong desire, when 

 done with the homes of earth, it is not for the want of outward appliances. 



In the march of civilization across the Atlantic, a great stride was made in 

 the development of the idea of homes for the million. The Puritans, Quakers, 

 Huguenots and Moravians, derided and persecuted in the old countries of Europe 

 for their purity, simplicity and advocacy of religious freedom and civil equality, 

 determined to migrate to this country and establish a government in which the 

 divine right of kings should not be the leading idea, but rather the divine right 

 of every man to think for himself, to hold lands in fee simple, to build a house 

 and plant an orchard, to marry a wife and bring up children, in short to be a 

 man and have a home of his own, and not be forever the tenant and serf of 

 another. Upon this corner stone of civil and religious freedom and equality, 

 our country has been built up with wonderful rapidity and strength. We have 

 not the nobility and gentry of the old and effete civilization of Europe, nor the 

 magnificent palaces nor stately mansions which these classes build for their 

 homes, but the average American is more intelligent, and occupies a higher 

 level than the average European, and the average American home is far more 

 comfortable than that of any country in the world. This is the testimony of 

 all travellers, both American and foreign. An English nobleman travelling in 

 this country a few years since, was taken to see the homes of some of the farm- 

 ers in our own beloved Berkshire, and after examining minutely the kitchens, 



