Failing the preacher—apart from the helpful influence of the scene imagined—and debarred the aid of that sympathy which thrills through a crowd when touched by the living voice of a loving fellow-man, we would attempt for a moment, through the medium of this little book, to enforce on the individual reader two methods of improving the present event suggested on slight reflection.
1. The professed character, and what we fain hope to be the spirit, of the gathering, suggest a duty which concerns us in our domestic relations.
Men, some of them not long ago, in arms against each other, we see now on terms of amity. Perhaps the Austrian meets in the park the Italian he has faced in the field—the Turk, the Egyptian at whom he aimed his scimitar—the veteran Frenchman, the British soldier with whom he grappled at Waterloo—but enemies or aliens no longer, they pass, if they do not recognise each other, as friends. This congress on pacific terms, with a cordial understanding, is a spectacle on which the eye loves to linger, and over which the heart of the philanthropist dilates with hope. Now, does not this festival, without any far-fetched application, seem to say to every one of us, as members of a family, that surely at this time consistency is added to the other grounds of duty which require us to cultivate towards those related to us by nature an unsuspicious temper, a frank and open disposition, a desire to conciliate where differences have arisen, and a determination to cement where cordiality prevails? Should not each endeavour to make his home—whether mansion or cottage, hall or hut—a sanctuary sacred to peace and concord? Should not each man now more than ever aspire to the fulfilment of the office and the enjoyment of the benediction described and pronounced by the Divine Teacher of love, “Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God.” Unseemly and inconsistent is it, while we are inviting foreigners to forget past enmities, to consign to oblivion by-gone strife, for any of us to allow domestic jealousies and heart-burnings to torment our breasts, which should be full of domestic charities and sympathies. While thousands, of different colours, climes, and costumes, join to bury the hatchet of strife under the Hyde Park elms, let those who own a common parentage, who in childhood sat on the same knee, and were nursed in the same bosom, or whose relationship, though not so intimate, is far from remote, between whom, alas, differences have sprung up, seek by mutual concession to arrive at a better understanding, and thus render the present year memorable in their domestic annals. It would be a beautiful incident to associate with this bright passage in the history of the world a few lines relating to reconciliation and love, where private strifes had embittered hearts intended by nature and providence to be ever one.