Such are the thoughts, which must often pass through the mind of a mother. Such are the musings to which she must be often led when she watches in solitude over the child of her hopes and affections. But let her know, while these thousand conflicting emotions are agitating her bosom, that it depends on her more than any other human being to say, whether her hopes or her fears shall be realized.

Among the thoughts, which send a pang into a mother's heart, as she gazes upon her babe, is the slender hold by which she possesses her precious treasure. She knows that one half of these beautiful buds wither and fall before they come to maturity. She feels that her watching and toils may all be in vain. But not in vain, another instinct assures her. There is an instinct within her, deeper and surer than any written revelation, that not one of these little ones is forgotten before God. She feels, that if the child of her affections is early torn from her embrace, it is only to be laid in the bosom of Infinite Love. She reasons, that if God provided such a circle of warm hearts to receive it at its advent into this world, merely

because it is the creature of his forming hand, much more should he prepare a ministry of kind affections to welcome it into that world, where it has already a representing angel before the throne of God.

The impress of our heavenly origin and destination is brightest and freshest upon us in our earliest years. A beautiful child or infant seems more like a celestial inhabitant lent to us for a while, than one of the creatures of this earth, which sin soon tarnishes, and suffering disfigures. As a living poet has well described our natural feelings with regard to the connection of the young with an invisible world;

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,

But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the East
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day."

No human being has so much power to preserve this primeval image of heaven in the soul as the mother. Peculiarly susceptible of religious emotion herself, she can communicate it more effectually than any other instructer. The lessons she teaches are never forgotten. They will recur with the softened image of her memory to remotest years. The prayers, that are said around her knees, will be instinctively murmured by the lips of extreme age.

It is in her power to fill their minds with every honorable and noble sentiment, to establish in them a stern regard for truth, and justice, and integrity. This, it is true, can be done in no other way than by cherishing those principles herself. As far as my own experience goes, I can say that the mother's influence is paramount and irresistible. So accustomed am I to trace home to its source the moral character I see developed by my

acquaintance, that where I see honor, delicacy, integrity, humanity, exhibited in an uncommon degree, I say to myself, "That man had a good mother," and on enquiry I find myself not often mistaken. The sympathy of childhood is so strong with the bosom from which it first drew its life, that every feeling and sentiment of the mother vibrates through its whole being. The mother, if she pleases, may form in her children the habit of candor, charity, and fairness, or she may fill them with the most bitter and unrelenting prejudices against any class of persons, whom she may choose to represent in an odious light. Nay, the very epithets she uses will be for many years decisive of the feelings of her children with regard to individuals, and even masses of society. Such is the weakness of human nature, that we are all educated with a greater or less amount of prejudices, and one of the hardest tasks of life is to unlearn the prepossessions of the cradle, and to appreciate with fairness those whom we were early taught to despise or to detest. It follows of course then, that every moral obliquity of the mother is almost sure to be reflected in the

character of the children. If she begins with a course of finesse and deceit, it will not be long before she will find them as expert as herself, and she will probably be the first person upon whom they will make their experiments.

cess.

The motives, which operate upon the mother to induce her to fidelity, are stronger than are presented to any moral agent in this world, for to none is this world a scene of juster retribution. If she be faithful to her trust, her sons grow up to honor and sucAs she sees them mount up to the high places of wealth or station, or moving in an humbler sphere in peace and prosperity, with a proud satisfaction she may point to them and say with the Roman matron, "These are my jewels." The very virtues she has cherished in their hearts secure to her that respectful and affectionate attention, which is so soothing to the decline of life, and prepare her to leave the world with the satisfactory reflection, that she has not lived in vain. She will see her daughters adorning whatever sphere they are called to fill. In the good wife and mother she will see the fruit of that domestic training which she so