tionate, judicious, dignified, and intellectual, as when a wife only; while this new love, deep as the very wells of life, mingles with the current of her thoughts and feelings, giving warmth and intensity to all, without impairing the force or the purity of any. Yet while her attributes remain the same, her being is absorbed in the existence of her child. Now more than ever she forgets herself, deeming nothing impossible which has reference to her own devotedness, and its good-computing neither time, nor space, nor capability in the single consideration of its happiness-regarding neither labour, watching, nor weariness, as worthy of a thought in comparison with its lightest slumber, or its minutest pain.

the perverse? Who would be found to fulfil the hard duties of serving the ungrateful, ministering to the dissatisfied, and watching over the hopeless? No. There is no instance in which the providential care of our heavenly Father is more beautifully exhibited than in that of a mother's love. Winding its silken cords alike around every natural object, whether worthy or unworthy, it creates a bond which unkindness cannot break. It pursues the wanderer without weariness, and supports the feeble without fainting. Neither appalled by danger, nor hindered by difficulty, it can labour without reward, and persevere without hope. "Many waters cannot quench" it; and when the glory has vanished from the brow of the beloved one, when summer friends have turned away, and guilt, and misery, and disgrace have usurped their place, it steals into the soul of the outcast like the sunbeams within the cell of the prisoner, lighting the darker dungeon of the polluted heart, bringing along with it fond recollections of past happiness, and wooing back to fresh participation in the light and the gladness that still remain for the broken and contrite spirit.

If the love of a mother be considered as an instinct which pervades all animated nature, it is not the less beautiful when exhibited in the human character, for being diffused throughout creation; because it proves that the Author of our being, knew that the distinctive attributes of humanity would be insufficient to support the mother through her anxieties, vexations and cares. He knew that reason would be making distinctions between the worthy and the unworthy, and prematurely consigning the supposed repro- If the situation of a wife brings woman to bate to ruin; that fancy would make selec- a right understanding of her own character, tions, and dote upon one while it neglected that of a mother leads to a strict knowledge another; that caprice would destroy the of her own principles. Scarcely is any one bond of domestic union; and that intellec- so depraved as to teach her child what she tual pursuits would often take precedence conscientiously believes to be wrong. And of domestic duties. And therefore he pour-yet teach it she must, for its "clear pure ed into woman's heart the same instinct which impels the timid bird to risk the last extremity of danger for her helpless young. Nor let any one think contemptuously of this peculiar capability of loving, because under the extinct it is shared with the brute. It is not a sufficient recommendation to our respect that it comes immediately from the hand of our Creator-that we have no power to control or subdue it-that it is

eyes" are fixed upon hers to learn their meaning, and its infant accents are inquiring out the first principles of good and evil. How, with such a picture before her, would any woman dare to teach what she did not implicitly, as well as rationally, and from mature examination believe to be true. In a few days-hours-nay, moments, that child may be a cherub in the courts of HeaWhat if a stain should have been upon its wings, and that stain the impress of a mother's hand! or if its earthly life should be prolonged, it is the foundation of the important future that the mother lays. Other governors in after years may take upon themselves the tuition of her child, and lead him through the paths of academic lore, but the early bias-the bent of the

ven.

moral character-the first principles of spiritual life, will be hers, and hers the lasting glory or the lasting shame.

must find as he gains experience, a perfect accordance between the principles of virtue and the instruction he first heard from his mother's lips, as well as the rules by which her own conduct is regulated. It is this respect mingled with natural affection, that constitutes the strongest and most durable bond which is woven in with the life-strings of the heart; that draws back the wanderer to his home; and is the last, the very last, which the reprobate casts off.

There is no scene throughout the whole range of our observation, more strikingly illustrative of intellectual, moral, and even physical beauty than that presented by a domestic circle, where a mother holds her proper place, as the source of tenderness, the centre of affection, the bond of social union, the founder of each salutary plan, the umpire in all contention, and the general fountain of cheerfulness, hope, and consolation. It is to clear up the unjust suspicion that such a mother steps forward; to ward off the unmerited blow; to defend the wounded spirit from the injury to which it would sullenly submit; to encourage the hopeless, when thrown back in the competition of talent; to point out to those who have been defeated, other aims in which they may yet succeed; to stand between-that woman who has been cherished in the timid and the danger they dread; and, on behalf of each, and all, to make their peace with offended authority, promising, hoping, and believing, that they will never willingly commit the same fault again.

Even amongst her boys, those wayward libertines of nature's commonwealth, the mother may, if she acts judiciously, be both valuable and dear; for wild and impetuous as they are when they first burst forth from the restraints of childhood, and rush on regardless of every impediment and wholesome check, as if to attain in the shortest space of time, the greatest possible distance from dependence and puerility, they are apt to meet with crosses and disappointments which plunge them suddenly back into the weakness they have been struggling to overcome, or rather to conceal; and it is then that a mother's love supplies the balm which their wounded feelings want, and provided they can mingle respect with their affection, they are not ashamed to acknowldege their dependence upon it still.

It may here be observed how much depends upon the word respect. When the boy respects his mother, she is associated with his highest aspirations, and therefore he has pride as well as pleasure in her love. But he will not respect her merely because she has nursed him when an infant. No. He

In turning from the contemplation of a mother in the midst of her family, to that of a mere old woman, we make a melancholy descent from important usefulness to neglected imbecility. Perhaps we have been dwelling too much upon what ought to be, but the bare mention of an old woman brings us down at once to what is. To inquire why it should be thus, belongs more to the writer on morals than on poetry; yet so it is

her infancy and flattered in her youth, who has been exalted to the most honourable station which her sex can fill, and who has spent the meridian of her life in toils and anxieties for the good of others, becomes in old age, a mere proverb, and a by-word-a warning to the young and the gay of what they must expect-a similitude for all that is feeble and contemptible—an evidence of the destructive power of time-a living emblem of decay.

It is true the mother is a mother still, and greatly is it to be feared, that where she sinks into a state of total neglect, it is from the absence of all feeling of respect in the minds of her children; nor are there wanting instances to prove this fact-instances in which the want of youthful beauty has been more than supplied by the loveliness of a mind at peace with all the world, and with its God; where the weakness of old age has been dignified by the services of a well-spent life: and where the wants and wishes of second childhood have been soothed by affection, whose vital principle is gratitude, and whose foundation is esteem. But we speak of the world, and the things of the world as we find them, and we find old women so frequently neglected and despised, that it becomes a duty, as well as a pleasure, to show, that though berest of every

other charm, they may still be poetical-poetical in their recollections, beyond what human nature can be in any other state or stage of its existence.

It is an unkind propensity that many writers have, to make old women poetical through the instrumentality of their passions, exaggerating them into witches and monsters of the most repulsive description, and that not so much "to point a moral," as "to adorn a tale;" but in such instances the writer is indebted to their recollections for all the interest which his unnatural exhibitions excite-to flashes of former tenderness shooting through the gloom of despair-to bright and glowing associations following in the wake of madness-and to once familiar images of love and beauty, re-animated by a strange paradox, at the touch of the wand of death, and bending in all their early loveliness over the brink of the grave.

Infinite indeed beyond the possibility of calculation, must be the recollections and associations of her, whose long life, from its earliest to its latest period, has been a life of feeling-whose experience has been that of impressions, rather than events-and whose sun goes down amidst the varied and innumerable tints which these impressions have given to its atmosphere. Endued with an .nexhaustible power of multiplying relative ideas, how melancholy must be the situation of her who was once beloved and cherished, now despised and forsaken-who in her turn loved and cherished others, and is now neglected. If she be a mother-one of those fond mothers who expect that mere indulgence is to win the lasting regard of their children, what sad thoughts must crowd upon her at every fresh instance of unkindness, and every additional proof that she has fallen away from what she was, both in her own and others' estimation. Over the brow that now frowns upon her, she perhaps has watched with unutterable tenderness through the long night when every eye but hers' was sleeping. The lips that now speak to her coldly, or answer her with silence when she speaks, she has bathed with the welcome draught when they were parched and burning with contagious fever. The scorn with which her humble pretensions are looked down upon, arises in the hearts of those for

whose higher intellectual attainments she
has made every sacrifice, and exerted every
faculty. And what if she be unlearned in
the literature of modern times, she under-
stands deeply and feelingly the springs of
She
affection, and tenderness and sorrow.
knows from what source flow the bitterest
tears, and

now.

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child."

She sees the young glad creatures of
another generation sporting around her, and
her thoughts go back to the playmates of
her childhood-some reduced to the lowest
state of helplessness or suffering-some
dead and some forgotten. She hears the
reluctant answer when she asks a kindness
of one of the merry group, and she thinks
of the time when kindness was more freely
granted her, though far less needed than
She starts at the loud laugh, but can-
not understand the jest, and no one explains
She loses the thread
it to her listening ear.
of earnest conversation, and no one restores
the clue. She sits within the social circle,
but forms no link in the chain of social union.
Her thoughts and feelings cannot harmo-
nize with those of her juvenile companions,
and she feels in all its bitterness, that least
tolerable portion of human experience-what
it is to be desolate in the midst of society—
surrounded by kindred and friends, and yet
alone.

In looking at the situation of woman merely as regards this life, we are struck with the system of unfair dealing by which her pliable, weak and dependent nature is subjected to an infinite variety of suffering, and we are ready to exclaim, that of all earthly creatures she is the most pitiable. And so unquestionably she is, when unenlightened by those higher views which lead her hopes away from the disappointments of the present world, to the anticipated fruition promised to the faithful in the world to come. But the whole life of woman, when studied with reference to eternity, presents a view of the great plan of moral discipline mercifully designed to assist her right conduct through the trials and temptations which surround her path. In childhood she is necessarily instructed in what

they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God,

amongst the trees of the garden.

And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou!

And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.