is quenched
in fat; it has exchanged the music of the spheres for a hideous
caterwauling! Yet Mrs. Smith loves that child, and gobbles over it,
descending to its abysses of grossness.

Her house is one of many in a long unlovely street; it is furnished
according to the most corrupt dictates of bestial Philistinism--that
is, with a view to comfort. There are no subtle harmonies in the
papers and chintzes; there are no hidden suggestions of form and tone
in the cornices and bell handles; all is barren of proportion,
concord, and meaning. Still, this poor woman, with her inartistic eye
and foolish heart, loves this wretched shelter, and would pour out her
idiotic tears if she were leaving it for Paradise.

But if we descend from our aesthetic heights to the lowly level of the
biped Smith, we may see Mrs. S. in a totally different atmosphere, and
certain lights and shadows will play about her with a radiance not
altogether without beauty. She is a single-minded woman, anxious to
make her husband and children comfortable and happy in their
home,--and dreaming of nothing beyond this. She is full of homely
wisdom; a hundred little economies she practises with forethought and
unwearying assiduity tend to make her husband and children love her
and regard her as a paragon of domestic policy. Her husband's
affection and her children's affection are all the world to her; music
and painting and poetry, Mr. Ruskin, Phidias, Praxiteles, Holman Hunt,
and Mr. Whistler pale away into shadows of shadows in presence of the
indications of love she receives from that baby. And this intense
single-minded love elevates her within its own compass. She sees in
that baby's eyes the light that never was on sea or land, the
consecration and the mother's dream. She broods over it till she
effects for it in her own maternal fancy an apotheosis; and round its
image in her heart there glows a bright halo of poetry. She sees
through the fat. The grossness disappears before her rapt gaze. There
remains the spirit from heaven:--

Sweet spirit newly come from Heaven
With all the God upon thee, still
Beams of no earthly light are given
Thy heart e'en yet to bless and fill.
Thy soul a sky whose sun has set,
Wears glory hovering round it yet;
And childhood's eve glows sadly bright
Ere life hath deepened into night.

So with the husband; so with the home; a glory gathers round them,
which she alone, the i