2

WOMAN AS MOTHER.

"She will not tire on thee to wait
In early hour or late,
To-morrow, even as yesterday,
Still onward, onward in love's way
To speed, her only dream.
So many love-deeds done, to cease
Her kindly toil, and rest in peace,
Small joy to her would seem.'

-Keble

'Grétry, dans son excellent essai sur la musique, a dit sur l'amour maternel: Le cœur d'une mère est le chef-d'œuvre de la nature. Ce mot est aussi vrai qu'ingenieux. En voici un autre très touchant. Une femme venait de

perdre son fils; un prêtre, invoquant la religion pour la résigner à son malheur, lui rappela le sacrifice d'Abraham: Ah! mon père, s'ecria-t-elle, iamais Dieu ne l'eut exigé d'une mère." —Legouvé.

"A woman lives,

Not bettered, quickened toward the truth and good,
Through being a mother? . . . Then she's none !

-E. Barrett Browning.

N no relation of life does woman appear to greater advantage than as the Mother. Mother! that word which, in all languages, is the sweetest and most precious, the word first learned and last forgotten. As the mother, her love grows deeper, purer, if possible, and more unselfish; her devotion more intense, her sympathy more comprehensive. All the capabilities of her nature are never developed until she has felt at her bosom the light pressure of her infant's lips. Thenceforth her weakness is turned into strength, her timidity into heroism. Her maternal affection calls forth much which had previously been unrevealed, even unsuspected; a passion, an endurance, a moral elevation, an intellectual force, of the possession of which she herself had been unaware. The plainest features acquire a certain beauty when brightened by a mother's smile. Herder speaks of this sweet motherly love as "last among the characteristics of woman:" surely he should have placed it first and foremost. He describes it as almost independent of "cold reason;" as absolutely removed from all selfish hope of reward. And no doubt this is the distinction, this unselfishness, between a father's love and a mother's. The father is proud of his son, and sees in him one who will perpetuate his name, perhaps elevate and dignify it; sees in him his representative, and regards any success he may attain as something to which he has himself contributed. A mother's love is free from all such alloy; she gives up her heart to her child because she becomes absorbed in its existence,-looks upon it, in truth, as a part of herself. Yet she will trace in it the father's fea

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A MOTHER'S LOVE AND INFLUENCE.

tures; never her own. What she will suffer, what she will undertake, what she will accomplish for it! Uncomplainingly, nay, exultantly, she will watch, hour after hour, by the sick one's bedside, or wait up, night after night, for the prodigal's return. She will hope, when every one else has seen that hope is useless; she will fear, when every one else perceives that fear is unnecessary. She will endure privation, pain, the slow agony of deferred expectation, the averted look, the angry word, the world's contumely, and still love on. She will shrink with feminine sensitiveness from the sight of human anguish ; but let it be her child that suffers, and straightway she braces up her nerves, and it is her hand that is steadiest, her smile that is calmest; it is she who smooths the pillow and applies the bandage. In all our trials, amid all our afflictions, the mother is still by our side. If we even sin, says Washington Irving, she reproves more in sorrow than in anger; nor can she tear us from her bosom, nor forget that we are her child.

The influence of the mother on her household is almost always for good. She it is who supplies its grace, its beauty, its tenderer aspects, its atmosphere of purity, its repose. She it is who maintains its harmony and order; who supplies that element of gentleness which is of the most enduring strength. The rough boys are obedient and subdued in her sweet presence; the father's stern brow relaxes; the servants work more willingly and deftly; the wheels of the household machine glide with greater smoothness. When death calls away the mother, it calls away, at the same time, the sunshine of home. Morning and night will come as before; spring will follow winter and summer spring; the grass will grow green and rank on the mound in the distant churchyard; but the void left by the mother is never filled up. There is neither spring nor summer in the circle from which she has been removed. Because all that was best and brightest in that circle was due to her inexhaustible sympathy. Her ear, like her heart, was always open. She shared the confidences of her girls, the sanguine anticipations of her sons, the hopes and fears and joys and anxieties of her husband. I have seen many homes, and in all I have seen that the mother was the source of light and sweetness. The quaint old divine, Gurnall, draws a charming picture of the household of Lady Vere, the wife of the gallant Elizabethan soldier, Sir Horatio Vere :—" If ever

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WHAT GREAT MEN OWE TO THEIR MOTHERS. 5

any private dwelling," he says, "might be called a chapel, a little sanctuary, her house was such. There you might find her and her family twice every day upon their knees, solemnly worshipping the great God: there you might see them humbly sitting at His feet to hear His most holy Word read unto them, concluding constantly their evening service with singing one of David's Psalms. And if strangers were present, there was no deferring the worship of God to a more convenient season. They, too, were expected to become members for the time of this church in the house.' So admirable and so powerful is the example and regimen of the mother. It is she who warns, and comforts, and commands; who is equal to every emergency; whose large heart never fails to answer every demand upon it; whose self-sacrifice knows no limit; whose patience is as inexhaustible as her affection; whose industry supplies every want; whose energy knits together and animates the entire organisation. What do we not owe to the mother, and those transcendent qualities of hers :

"The reason firm, the temperate will,

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill !”

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It is an accepted axiom that the greatness of great men is generally due to their mothers; that from them they derive their finer qualities, the higher and purer strain in their nature, the vivacity and quickness of their intellectual perceptions. For instance, we hear little of Cromwell's father, but a great deal of Cromwell's mother, whom Mr. Forster describes as a woman with the glorious faculty of self-help when other assistance failed her." A woman, indeed, of whom a son might well be proud; whom he might well be content to take as his inspiration and example. "Ready for the demands of fortune in its extremest adverse time-of spirit and energy equal to her mildness and patience—who, with the labour of her own hands, gave dowries to five daughters sufficient to marry them into families as honourable, but more wealthy, than her own— whose single pride was honesty and whose passion love-who preserved in the gorgeous palace at Whitehall the simple tastes that distinguished her in the old brewery at Huntingdonwhose only care, amidst all her splendours, was for the safety of her beloved son in his dangerous eminence-finally, whose

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CROMWELL'S AND NAPOLEON'S MOTHERS.

closing wish, when that anxious care had outworn her strength, accorded with her whole modest and tender history, for it implored a simple burial in some country churchyard, rather than those ill-suited trappings of state and ceremony wherewith she feared, and with reason feared, that his Highness the Lord Protector of England would have her carried to some royal tomb!" We fancy that Cromwell's strong piety, his patience, his persistency, his domestic tastes and affections, his simplicity of character, were all his mother's. Between our English hero, with his plain rugged honesty and truthfulness, and Napoleon, with his charlatanism, his audacious mendacity, and his affectation, a wide gulf intervenes; but they resembled one another in their recognition of the immeasurable debt to their mothers. As Cromwell lodged the English squire's homely widow in Whitehall, the palace of the English kings, so Napoleon placed the Corsican advocate's daughter amid the splendours of the Tuileries. He could be false to his friends, he could cast aside the most devoted of his servants, he could dismiss from his hearth the loyal wife to whom he owed his early advancement, but to the last he was true to "Madame la Mère." He knew what she had been to him, how she had fostered his young abilities, how all that was best in that ambitious soul of his sprang from his mother.

"The mother, in her office, holds the key

Of the soul; and she it is who stamps the coin

Of character."

There is nothing in the splendid career of Canning more honourable than his devotedness to his mother, and it is certain that this devotedness was well deserved. She was a clever, energetic, patient, and persevering woman, who, to support herself and her child, was forced to adopt the stage as a profession. Her brilliant son rose into a social position far higher than she had ever attained, but he never failed in filial affection or respect. He wrote to her once a week, and this practice he continued when struggling forward in the race for power, and involved in the cares of public life. Nor were his letters brief, hurried, or formal; he described in them minutely his hopes, fears, actions, associates, and prospects. One of his most anxious desires was to withdraw her from the stage; and when, in 1801, on his retirement from the office