of improvement, and the rapid tide of
business enterprise. The main streets of a great city in this country,
may almost be termed so many dissolving views of perpetual change and
renewal. But, perhaps, there is hardly one of us who does not feel that
by his or her own exertions the essential element of Home can be made
far more abiding than it now is; and where we hear of frivolous
daughters and dissipated sons, many a parent may ask the question, "What
have I done to cheer and consecrate the household world, and make it
more abiding?"

My friends, when I consider the magnitude and importance of the subject
now before us, and how many topics of discussion grow out of it--when I
think how much must be left entirely unsaid--I entreat you not to
suppose that I offer this discourse as anything more than a
_suggestion_--a suggestion meant to turn your attention to this subject
of Home in the City, and leaving it to the elaboration of your own
thoughts. Remember, here abide the deepest springs of social life. The
noblest privileges, the greatest duties, find their basis here; and we
are taught first "to show piety at Home." And the influence of this
institution upon all other fields of human action, private or public, is
too obvious to mention. All life flows from the centre, outwards; and
the citizen who desires the order and purity of the community in which
he lives; the philanthropist, who, under all conditions, regards the
highest welfare of his race; the Christian, who urges the secret culture
of the soul, must look with peculiar solicitude to this institution. It
is one whose impotence is demonstrated by the strength of the instinct
which creates it and clings to it--an instinct which associates the most
genuine happiness with its sacred enclosure of affection, however rude
or poor that spot may be--which, while a man has such a place to call
his own, makes him feel that he is somebody, and has some tie and claim
in the world; and which, on the other hand, associated the most bitter
destitution, the dreariest isolation, with that one word--"Homeless."

How this instinct abides, how long and how far it goes with us, is
beautifully illustrated in the lines of Goldsmith.

"In all my wand'rings round this world of care,
In all my griefs--and God has giv'n my share,
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bow'rs to lay me down;
To husband out life's taper at the close,
And