IT does the heart good to read of some light-footed troubadour or reverend pilgrim from gate to gate, all the way across a strange country, everywhere welcome as an expected guest, and given the liberty of the host's kingdom. Chroniclers give us pretty pictures of the household sitting about the dusty palmer, listening to his and spirited homily; of the errant singer, wrapped in his worn cloak, delighting young maids and children with the old burden of Roncesvalles, or with the tale of that dreamer Rudel who crossed seas to find his unseen lady-love at Tripoli, and to die, satisfactorily, in her arms. Whether the master of the castle had subsequent cause to regret the shelter to his birds of passage, shall never learn. For those were the days of ; and the brave which accepted the without question was able to overlook a deficiency, if such there were, in the family silver. Of this best sort, too, was the hospitality of Alcinoüs to Ulysses, treating him like a king, and dreaming not of his hidden kingliness. Spanish courtesy yet keeps a show of heart-whole giving: "This is thy house," an Andalusian tells his visitor. An Indian, in his forest wigwam, does yet better. If he you at all, with your scalp at its accustomed altitude, he tenders he calls his, and would scorn to from you the innermost of his .  
"Is he not hospitable," asks one of our American essayists, "who entertains thoughts?"
 
Think of the unlicensed of the Roberds-men, out what had but just become theirs by right of might, and of our modern dispensation! of that Duke of Newcastle, the of whose receptions bewildered all England; or of another-143- social peer, Edward, Earl of Derby, "in whose grave, since 1572," said Thomas Fuller, "hospitality hath in a manner been laid asleep." Timon began as bravely as any of these. all formal recognition of his royal liberality, he made his frank exordium in the banquet-hall:—
 
——"My lords! ceremony
Was but devised at first to set a
On faint deeds, hollow welcomes,
Recanting goodness, sorry ere 'tis shown;
But where there is true friendship, there needs none;
Pray sit...."
 
Hospitality hath been called threefold: for one's family, of necessity; for strangers, of courtesy; for the poor, of charity. Friendship pushes its privilege to the broad extreme, and loses its sense of ownership.
 
"Cot or cabin have I none,
And sing the more that thou hast one."
 
The twin of the of Queen Bess set up their tent "on the Bankside;" alternately wearing "the same cloathes and clokes," and having but one bench of the house between them, which the twain "did so much admire"!
 
A guest should be permitted to graze, as it were, in the pastures of his host's kindness, left even to his own devices, like a rational being, and handsomely neglected. Our merry friend, T., has been known to beat his breast and while passing a certain house, whose consider themselves his friends. It seems that on his last visit he foun............