Those early years which held Richter in the grasp of their miseries and perplexities had passed away.  Bravely had he struggled through temptations which at all times and in all places beset young men, added to such as are peculiar to one of the highest inspirations steeped to the lips in poverty.  Through all perils he had borne the purity of his youth, the freedom and simplicity of his deep soul.  And so he is privileged to bring to marriage and the delicate nurture of children the fine insights of a man of genius who has been wholly true to the costly gift he possessed.  Of the domestic fragrance of a well-ordered family no savor eludes him.  The wife and children, the vigorous and rich life which they offer to a good man,—­those are touched with keenest analysis and in festal spirit.  Most thoroughly does the author possess that rare combination of mind which seeks speculative truth no less than ideal beauty; with him emotion is nothing, unless it leads to principle.

“Levana,” as we have said, is no iron system for the education of children; it is rather a most readable text-book for the education of parents.  It sustains a relation of spiritual fathership to common fathers, and offers choicest counsel to those who would assume the office of family-teacher honestly and in the fear of God.  And it seems to us that of these subtle influences of home-culture, whose gospel Richter here declares, our American parents have been too neglectful.  The world knows that we are proud, and justly so, of our public educational apparatus.  But that our legislation in this direction produces nothing but good, no observing man can admit.  This elaborate reading-and-writing machine of which the State turns the handle, while it induces a certain average sharpness in the children, leaves rusting some of the noblest privileges as well as the highest duties of the parent.  Yet citizens will cry that they feel their responsibilities for educating, and, to their better fulfilment, work daily for dollars.  This is well; but let us not throw our dollars in a parabolic curve over the house, on the chance of their making a happy descent in some distant school-room.  The bringing-up of children is something very different from pickling cucumbers or salting fish,—­it cannot be done by contract and in the gross.  But, ah, there is no time for anything else!  Then reduce your way of living to anything above the food-and-shelter point, and so make time.  Richter was always poor, always a man of great labor and great performance, and here is what he says:—­“I deny myself my evening meal in my eagerness to work; but the interruptions by my children I cannot deny myself.”