The period which succeeded the first half-dozen years of my union with Lucy, was not less happy than the first had been; though it assumed a new character.  Our children then came into the account, not as mere playthings, and little beings to be most tenderly loved and cared for, but as creatures that possess the image of God in their souls, and whose future characters, in a measure, depended on our instruction.  The manner in which Lucy governed her children, and led them by gentle means to virtue and truth, has always been a subject of the deepest admiration and gratitude with me.  Her rule has been truly one of love.  I do not know that I ever heard her voice raised in anger, to any human being, much less to her own offspring; but whenever reproof has come, it has come in the language of interest and affection, more or less qualified by severity, as circumstances may have required.  The result has been all that our fondest hopes could have led us to anticipate.

When we travelled, it was with all our young people, and a new era of happiness, heightened by the strongest domestic affection, opened on us.  All who have seen the world have experienced the manner in which our intellectual existences, as it might be, expand; but no one, who has not experienced it, can tell the deep, heartfelt satisfaction there is, in receiving this enlargement of the moral creature, in close association with those we love most on earth.  The manner in which Lucy enjoyed all she saw and learned, on our first visit to the other hemisphere; her youngest child—­all four of our children were born within the first eight years of our marriage—­her youngest child was then long past its infancy, and she had leisure to enjoy herself, in increasing the happiness of her offspring.  She had improved her mind by reading; and her historical lore, in particular, was always ready to be produced for the common advantage.  There was no ostentation in this; but everything was produced just as if each had a right to its use.  Then it was, I felt the immense importance of having a companion, in an intellectual sense, in a wife.  Lucy had always been intelligent; but I never fully understood her superiority in this respect, until we travelled together, amid the teeming recollections and scenes of the old world.  That America is the greatest country of ancient or modern times, I shall not deny.  Everybody says it; and what everybody says, must be true.  Nevertheless, I will venture to hint, that, caeteris paribus, and where there is the disposition to think at all, the intellectual existence of every American who goes to Europe, is more than doubled in its intensity.  This is the country of action, not of thought, or speculation.  Men follow out their facts to results, instead of reasoning them out.  Then, the multiplicity of objects and events that exist in the old countries to quicken the powers of the mind, has no parallel here.  It is owing to this want of the present and the past, which causes the American, the moment he becomes speculative, to run into the future.  That future promises much, and, in a degree, may justify the weakness.  Let us take heed, however, that it do not lead to disappointment.