highly the blessings they have. Those of us who are in moderate
circumstances find it so much easier to envy our rich neighbors than to
think with gratitude of our happy lot, contrasted with the many thousand
of our needier brethren. We enjoy so many blessings, that we become
unmindful of them. We rarely think at all about our health, until a few
days' sickness reminds us of the boon we have been enjoying so
unconsciously. In the darkest days of the great crisis, accounts reached
us every week from India, telling us that refined and delicately-reared
English men and women were being brutally slaughtered or exposed to the
loathsome horrors of a lingering siege. What a paradise the humblest
cottage at home would have seemed to these poor creatures, though some
of them had been accustomed to 'stately homes.'

How beautifully this sentiment of gratitude for the common blessings of
life has been expressed by Emile Souvestre, one of the purest and
noblest writers of our time, and one whose early history presents an
instance of great obstacles and trials nobly met and overcome!

'If a little dry sand be all that is left us, may we not still make it
blossom with the small joys we now trample under foot. Ah! if it be the
will of God, let my labor be still more hard, my home less comfortable,
my table more frugal; let me even assume a workman's blouse, and I can
bear it all willingly and cheerfully, provided I can see the loved faces
around me happy, provided I can feast upon their smiles and strengthen
myself with their joy. O holy contentment with poverty! it is thy
presence I invoke. Grant me the cheerful gayety of my wife, the free,
unrestrained laughter of my children, and take in exchange, if
necessary, all that is yet left me.'

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