THE SOUL OE SONG. 
143 
remembered for ever, and as a frequent pastime it is the 
purest and most refining antidote to the gilded allure¬ 
ments of gaiety and fashion. Picture the Christmas 
group sitting round the hearth of blazing logs, where 
the flames leap up, and up, and flash their ruddy radi¬ 
ance on the ruddier walls, playing in strange sparkles 
and gold drops on the old cornices, and leaving a 
strange Christmas light upon every happy face assem¬ 
bled there. The song is all that is needed to complete 
their joy, and that scene, completed by the fireside song, 
becomes a memory to each one there which none of the 
detergent vanities of the world will ever annihilate. 
There can be no limit to the moral beauty of this. 
Everything which refines the home, which makes it 
attractive, which endears it by spells and enchantments, 
and words of love, and songs of gladness, has an effect 
which abides through life, and gives force and reality to 
the domestic character, and which makes home a haven 
of refuge from the storms and whirlwinds of the world. 
Who, but the most abandoned and outcast, can for a 
moment picture such a scene without calling up from his 
own circle of associations a hundred memories of dear 
ones that have passed away,—of others that still linger 
—linger as if only to love—the joys of the world having 
all passed from them; and of others yet in the bloom 
and flush of life, stepping one by one into the circles of 
manhood and womanhood, to be cheered by-and-by 
with the prattle and the songs of their own babes, and 
to know how truly home is home when cheered by the 
breath of song. 
The object of the ballad is to stir the feelings by a 
