are there. The views out of window, it should
be remembered, are, as to all main features,
as distinctly home pictures as the portraits
or landscapes on the walls. A certain bit of
shore at sea, a certain hillside, village street,
or group of London houses; or certain peeps
into backyards and London alleys, belong to
the house, grow daily more familiar to the
eye; and, like any other household property,
have to be put to their best use in the
establishment.

When a town window glazes a small
street scene, the best use to which that scene
can be put, is to extract from it a general
sense of what it expresses, as a symbol of the
world seen from within the walls of home.
The occupants of the houses should be
watched and cared about as men and women;
not as Mr. A. or Mrs. B., so many known
persons. They should be regarded as parts
of home rather than as expressions of the
unknown mass beyond. Of these people we
should, I think, take pains to avoid being told
any thing specific. We should let their names
drop out of our ears, if they get into them by
any chance, and call them rather by the
numbers of their houses, when we communicate to
other members of the household an impression
they have made. Watching them in
that manner, we can care much about their
births, marriages, and deaths; can become
strongly interested in them, living, working,
loving, erring, shifting out of sight, and
giving place to others. The row of homes
over the way adds, thus, to the ever-
changing problem offered by the stream of
people passing up and down the street, not
a few of the mysteries attached to men
and women gathered in a settled
habitation.

Not saying a word more to demonstrate
that it is no sign of wisdom to decry the good
practice of looking out of window, I shall
finish very shortly what I have to say upon
this matter. To go back, then, to the two
axioms. The eye is the window of the body ;
the window is the eye of the house. Also
to the postulate that a man, whose spirit
living in his body never looks out of its
windows, must want either worth or wit. But
a spirit that looks out may be a bad spirit.
The same is true of the eye of the house.
It has been said that, through the
house-windows we look from home into the
world. Therefore, in whatever way we look
out of the house-windows, in that way we
look out into the world. And this, be sure
of it, fathers and mothers !—for I, though but
a bachelor, am very sure,—makes looking
out of window such a test of character as
breathing on a magic mirror used to be
sometimes in the old days of the enchanters.
Let a child look out of window ; and, do you
observe the nature of its comments. Upon
the spirit in which it has learnt to regard man,
woman, and child, apart from all personal
reasons of love or dislike, depends the success
of the religious teaching it has had. If it can
see in the world of human interest on the
reverse side of the glass only stuff for mockery,
far worse—because one of the child's guides
sent from heaven is a gay spirit of mockery—
if it can dwell only upon material which
seems to it matter for scorn and censure, which
belong in no degree whatever to the right
mind of a child; certainly there are dangers
threatening its development of heart and
soul. When you have taught it to look out
of window wisely, to detect matter for kindly
sympathy, for praise of many of the
unknown people on the other side the glass,
for satisfaction in their visible pleasures,
regret at their visible trials and hardships;
when you have taught it so to construct theories
that shall account for observed comings
and goings, that it shall always naturally put
a genial construction upon acts of which
the motive can be only guessed; when you
never hear anything in the way of
comment harsher than pity for the certainly
degraded, and a quick short cry of
indignation at the manifestly cruel; when all
doubtful problems are solved to the credit
of humanity, and good is seen not only
wherever manifest, but dragged out of
hiding-places among trivial accidents and
acts that might pass unconsidered—then be
sure that as the child looks out of window, so
it looks into the world; and that, by looking
out of window, it has learnt no small part of
worldly wisdom and religious duty. As this
is true of children, so it is true also of men
and women. For my own part—let me spoil
my test by confessing it—I take a new
acquaintance to my Rubens picture, and he
talks such sense or nonsense as he can; it
matters little whether one or other. I take
him to the magic glass, lead him to spend
a little of his breath freely about the
movements on the other side; and, in an hour I
have no indistinct perception whether he is
to remain still only an acquaintance, or
whether he is to become a friend.

That is my case. If I had children I
should teach them to look out of window;
and if I had a wife it might be that
sometimes when she was looking out of window
I should love her best.

Now ready, Price Five Shillings and Sixpence, cloth
boards,
THE TWELFTH VOLUME
OF
HOUSEHOLD WORDS,
Containing from No. 280 to No. 303 (both inclusive),
and the extra Christinas Number.