M. Pontmartin went on to remark that "all sons who are not poets but whose hearts have bled with the same wound, whose eyes have shed the same tears, must here salute and thank Victor de Laprade as a brother-a brother endowed with the faculty of expressing what they feel and of giving to their sobs a voice melodious and immortal." At that time my heart had not yet "saignè de la même blessure," my eyes had not yet shed those tears of remorse at the thought of lost opportunities of showing filial devotion towards a mother removed by death from the possibility of receiving such tribute any longer. I said therefore to myself, "I must get the whole of this poem and translate it for my mother while it is still happily inapplicable." But before I found a full copy of these verses at the end of the "Poëmes Evangéliques," ten years and more had passed and I could adopt as my own Pontmartin's prose and Laprade's verse. I will not now add the seventeen stanzas which follow in this "Consécration," but merely give the three first stanzas in the almost literal version which I jotted down on that bygone August morning on the banks of the Loir : "While I could still behold thee, still could hear While 'mid thy toils, my mother, and thy grief, "Before that hour when, breaking our home-bliss, God placed thee high o'er human love and care,- While thou wast yonder in that quaint old chair: "Too often have I checked my heart's fond play, To pay (what can ?) the pains of mother's love." Most of all towards mothers, but not of mothers only, is this regret felt, that, while the loved ones were with us, we did not show enough how we loved them. This is the pathos of the ending of "the Child's First Grief" by Mrs. Hemans: "Ah! when my brother with me played, Would I had loved him more." Perhaps some husband, wife, son, brother, or other kinsman, reading this page, will apply the lesson it contains to some one whom death has not yet made dearer. This letter of Charles Lamb's may help towards this blessed result: "I am wedded, Coleridge, to the fortunes of my sister and my poor old father. Oh! my friend, I think sometimes, could I recall the days that are past, which among them should I choose? not those merrier days, not the pleasant days of hope, which I have so often and so feelingly regretted, but the days of a mother's fondness for her schoolboy. What would I give to call her back to earth for one day, on my knees to ask her pardon for all those little asperities of temper which, from time to time, have given her gentle spirit pain! And the day, my friend, I trust, will come; there will be time enough for kind offices of love, if Heaven's eternal year be ours. Hereafter her meek spirit shall not reproach me. Oh! my friend, cultivate the filial feelings! and let no man think himself released from the kind charities of relationship. These shall give him peace at the last; these are the best foundation for every species of benevolence. Send me an account of your health; indeed I am solicitous about you. God love you and yours." "Twenty golden years ago" the present writer strolled to the old church of Stoke Pogis, not far from Windsor, and he noted down on the spot the epitaph placed by the poet Gray, author of the famous "Elegy," on the tomb of his mother whom he called "the careful and tender mother of many children, one of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her." It is, I think, in one of his letters that he writes:"We may have many friends but only one mother-a truth I did not discover till too late." Macaulay says the same thing in the third sentence of the following: "Make the most of it while yet you have that most precious of all good gifts, a loving mother. Read the unfathomed love of those eyes; the kind anxiety of that tone and look, however slight your pain. In after life you may have friends; fond, dear, kind friends; but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows. Often do I sigh in my struggle with the hard, uncaring world, for the sweet, deep security I felt when of an evening, nestled in her bosom, I listened to some quiet tale, suitable to my age, read in her tender and untiring voice. Never can I forget her sweet glances cast upon me when I appeared asleep-never her kiss of peace at night. Years have passed away since we laid her beside my father in the old churchyard, yet still her voice whispers from the grave, and her eyes watch over me as I visit spots long since hallowed to the memory of my mother." Most writers, and perhaps most readers, like a composition to flow on smoothly, as if from an inexhaustible spring. I have even known an intelligent editor to reject a paper-by the present writer, too, which is an aggravating circumstance in the case—on the plea that it abounded too much in quotations. Yet, what a writer has thought worth preserving and bringing forward thus is likely to have as much pith in it as the writer himself can produce from his inner consciousness. I pass on, then, to another branch of the subject-namely, the sacred obligation that weighs on mothers of deserving individually the traditional halo of motherhood: and, according to the policy just enunciated about quotations, I give these very true remarks from an American newspaper paragraph: "It is hard for a young mother, who has not yet overcome the wayward tendencies of her youthful nature, to realise the influence she exerts over her little ones. She is constantly surrounded by critical imitators, who copy her morals and manners. As the mother is, so are her sons and daughters. If a family of children are blessed with an intelligent mother who is dainty and refined in her manners, and does not consider it necessary to be one woman in a drawing-room and an entirely different person in every-day life, but who is a true mother and always a tender, charming woman, you will invariably see her habits of speech and perfect manner repeated in her children. Great, rough men, and noisy, busy boys will always tone down their voices, and step lightly, and try to be more mannerly, when she stops to give them a kind word or a pleasant smile; for a true mother will never fail to say or do all the pleasant things she can that will in any way help to lift up and cheer those whose lives are shaded with care and toil. The mother of to-day rules the world of to-morrow. Think of it, dear sisters, and guard well your home treasures." It is so long ago that I forget what mother it was that sent me the next passage with the entreaty written in the margin: "Do put this in the next IRISH MONTHLY." Some twenty or thirty IRISH MONTHLY'S have enlightened an ungrateful world since then; but now at last "Fun at Home" comes forth from the pigeonhole where it has lurked meanwhile : "There is nothing like it to be found-no, not if you search the world through. I want every possible amusement to keep the boys at home in the evenings. Never mind if they do scatter books and pictures, coats, hats, and boots! Never mind if they do make a noise around, with their whistling and hurrahing! We would stand aghast if we could have a vision of the young men gone to utter destruction for the very reason that, having cold, disagreeable, dull, stiff fire-sides at home, they sought amusement elsewhere. Don't let them wander beyond the reach of mother's influence, yet awhile. The time will come, before you think, when you would give the world to have your house tumbled by the dear hands of those very boys; when your hearts shall long for their noisy steps in the hall, and their ruddy when cheeks laid up to yours; you would rather have their jolly whistle than the music of all the operas; when you would gladly dirty carpets -ay, live without carpets at all! but to have their bright, strong forms beside you once more. Then play with and pet them. Praise Johnny's drawing, Betty's music, and baby's first attempt at writing his name. Encourage Tom to chop off his stick of wood, and Dick to persevere in making his hen-coop. If one shows a talent for figures, tell him he is your famous mathematician; and if another loves geography, tell him he will be sure to make a great traveller, or a foreign minister. Become interested in their pets, be they rabbits, pigeons, or dogs. Let them help you in home decorations; send them to gather mosses, grasses, and bright autumn leaves to decorate their room when the snow is all over the earth. And you will keep yourself young and fresh by entering into their joys, and keep those joys innocent by your knowledge of them." To the rigidly reasonable reader it may not seem quite relevant to this subject of mothers amusing their boys—that is, letting their boys amuse themselves-at home; but it hath pleased the present writer to attach this hidden meaning to the last of these deliciously nonsensical stanzas which the learned Porson has turned into the purest Greek. "Three children sliding on the ice, All on a summer's day, As it fell out, they all fell in, "Now had these children been at school, Or slid upon dry ground, Ten thousand pounds to one penny, "You parents that have children dear, Aye, "Keep them safe at home." Make home a real home for them. Teach them to look to home for comfort, and sympathy, and amusement, and all the elements of their happiness. How powerfully can the mothers and sisters of a happy home influence sons and brother for time and for eternity! "Heureux l'homme á qui Dieu donne une sainte mére, En vain la vie est dure, et la mort est amère- Yes, the presence, and, after she is gone, the memory of a holy and devoted mother is a strengthener of faith and of many other virtues. Mention has been made somewhere of a little girl who said: "I must now go with my father on Sundays to the Protestant church; but, when I grow up, I shall become a Catholic, for I want to belong to that Church which makes me honour the Blessed Virgin and pray for the soul of my own mother who is dead." I have lately met a parallel passage in some writing of or about Señor Castellar, the Spanish Gambetta as he is called by admirers of both. He says: "If I could return to the theological world, I should not embrace Protestantism whose harshness dries up the soul, the heart, and the conscience. But if I could, I would return and throw myself on my knees before the Holy Virgin, and after my death I would implore a resting-place at the foot of the cross which covers with its sacred arms the spot which I love and venerate the most-my mother's grave." DEAR ECHOES. BY JANET ELLIS. EAR gifts, that come to us at Christmas-tide, Of one great gift from out God's heart, replete Most wondrous gift! whose echoes down the years And toil, and haste, and triumph, and defeat, O Love! the gentlest sound, yet sound so high And yet can melt away and drop so low On the thrice-happy blessed Christmas-day With love, divine and human, twined and blent |