I do not know a more admirable picture than that presented by the Blackwood family after the death of their excellent father. “Our six selves,” says Robert, with unintentional pathos, in the simple narrative of the death and funeral which required no charm of language to make it go to the very heart of his correspondent. Six sons stood round the father's grave—the eldest twenty-eight, the youngest a child of eleven. The younger ones had still to be trained and cared for and put out in the world according to their father's intentions; but this is an office which but few young men care to take upon themselves with all its responsibilities. It would have been but natural had Alexander and Robert secured the freedom of their young manhood, having already, as nobody would deny, abundance to occupy them in the business and that Magazine which required such incessant care. They had reached an age when few young men nowadays remain within the echoes of nursery and schoolroom in their father's house; and as there was no want of money, nor even of a competent manager of the household affairs, they might have seemed to fulfil all their duties had they done no more, from the ease of their own independence, than stand by their mother in the charge of their younger brothers, and given her their advice and backing up.