d in the way in
which they furnished their house, that I have hinted at before: it gave
freedom to their children. Though their rooms were beautiful, it was not
with the tantalizing beauty of expensive and frail knick-knacks.
Pictures hung against the wall, and statuary safely lodged on brackets,
speak constantly to the childish eye, but are out of reach of childish
fingers, and are not upset by childish romps. They are not like china
and crystal, liable to be used and abused by servants; they do not wear
out; they are not spoiled by dust, nor consumed by moths. The beauty
once there is always there; though the mother be ill and in her chamber,
she has no fears that she shall find it all wrecked and shattered. And
this style of beauty, inexpensive as it is, compared with luxurious
furniture, is a means of cultivation. No child is ever stimulated to
draw or to read by an Axminster carpet or a carved centre-table; but a
room surrounded with photographs and pictures and fine casts suggests a
thousand inquiries, stimulates the little eye and hand. The child is
found with its pencil, drawing; or he asks for a book on Venice, or
wants to hear the history of the Roman Forum.

But I have made my article too long. I will write another on the moral
and intellectual effects of house-furnishing.

* * * * *

"I have proved my point, Miss Jennie, have I not? _In house-furnishing,
nothing is more economical than beauty_."

"Yes, papa," said Jennie; "I give it up."

* * * * *

THE BLACK PREACHER.

A BRETON LEGEND.

At Carnac in Brittany, close on the bay,
They show you a church, or rather the gray
Ribs of a dead one, left there to bleach
With the wreck lying near on the crest of the beach;
Roofless and splintered with thunder-stone,
'Mid lichen-blurred gravestones all alone,
'Tis the kind of ruin strange sights to see
That may have their teaching for you and me.

Something like this, then, my guide had to tell,
Perched on a saint cracked across when he fell.
But since I might chance give his meaning a wrench,
He talking his _patois_ and I English-French,
I'll put what he told me, preserving the tone,
In a rhymed prose that makes it half his, half my own.

An abbey-church stood here, once on a time,
Built as a death-bed atonement for crime:
'Twas for somebody's sins, I know not whose;
But sinners are plenty, and you can c