THROWN BACK UPON HIMSELF.

33

fails in this matter less frequently than the father, because the woman's temperament is more sympathetic than the man's :

"Great feelings hath she of her own,
Which lesser souls may never know :
God giveth them to her alone,
And sweet they are as any tone

Wherewith the wind may choose to blow."

-Lowell.

Yet much of the misery of later life arises from the want of maternal sympathy in childhood. I once saw a child go to his mother with a slate on which he had drawn a rough rude sketch, unmeaning enough to the careless eye. She glanced at it hastily, and put it aside with a pettish exclamation of "Nonsense! why do you waste your time so?" "It is a castle, mother, on a great hill," replied the boy, "with towers and flags; and don't you see the knights?" "Take it away," she said; "I can see nothing but stupid scratches!" I shall not readily forget the pained look with which the child turned from his mother to hide himself, silent and unhappy, in a distant corner. There were deeps of thought and heights of fancy in that boy's mind which the mother, not so much from want of mental force as from absolute lack of sympathy, could not touch. The brave castle which he had pictured out, with banners flying from its topmost turrets, and lofty arched gates, through which defiled a gay procession of knights in armour and ladies on horseback radiant with beauty-the glorious forms of the mountains, with sunlight gilding their peaks and mysterious shadows nestling in their vast bosoms-the poem and the drama which he had created were to the cold eye of the mother nothing but "scratches," as to the dull eye of the commonplace spectator one of Turner's most glorious canvases may be only a blur of colours!

There must be discipline in a family, and order, and system -a time and a place for everything. There must be command, and there must be obedience; but these will be the more easily attained and preserved, if, underlying all and harmonising all, prevails the grace of sympathy. Parent and child. must learn to share "the inward fragrance of each other's heart." The child must learn to trust, and the parent must strive to become worthy of being trusted. It is no light thing to receive the frank confidence of a young and innocent soul;

C

34

AN APPEAL TO THE MOTHER.

to watch its early aspirations; to be made familiar with its most secret hopes, anxieties, and wishes; to see, day after day, each new petal of this delicate flower revealing its unsullied beauty. How shalt thou avert from the tender blossom the chilling influence of frost; how shalt thou guide the thought aright; how purify and strengthen the aspirations; how restrain the exuberance of feeling; how subdue and control the force of passion; how inspire the mind with a noble purpose, if thou hast not in thyself the power and life of sympathy, a sympathy informed by knowledge and animated by love? Let this wonderful life and power be thine, O mother and thy children shall

"Take patience, labour, to their hearts and hands,

From thy hands and thy heart, and thy brave cheer,
And God's grace fructify through thee to all."
-E. B. Browning.

"There is a vision in the heart of each

Of justice, mercy, wisdom, tenderness
To wrong and pain, and knowledge of its cure-
And these embodied in a woman's form."

One by one thy duties wait thee,
Let thy whole strength go to each;
Let no future dreams elate thee,

-Robert Browning.

-Adelaide A. Proctor.

"A happy couple, he joying in her, she joying in herself, but in herself because she enjoyed him; both increased their riches by giving to each other, and making one life double, because they made a double life one; where desire never wanted satisfaction, nor satisfaction ever bred satiety, he ruling because she would obey, or rather, because she would obey, she therein ruling."-Sir Philip Sidney, "Arcadia."

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They joyed one joy, one grief they grieved,
One love they loved, one life they lived."

-Sir Philip Sidney, Ibid. (Epitaph on Argalus and Parthenia).

'Look through mine eyes with thine. True wife,

Round my true heart thine arms entwine;

My other dearer life in life

Look through my very soul with thine. . .
But that God bless thee, dear-who wrought
Two spirits to one equal mind-

With blessings beyond hope or thought,
With blessings which no words can find."

-Tennyson.

36

WOMAN AS WIFE.

"I would exhort all married people to seek that mutual love so commended to them by the Holy Spirit in the Bible. . . . The first effect of this love is the indissoluble union of your hearts. If you glue together two pieces of deal, provided that the glue be strong, their union will be so close that the stick will break more easily in any other part than where it is joined. Now God unites husband and wife so closely in Himself, that it should be easier to sunder soul from body than husband from wife; nor is this union to be considered as mainly of the body, but yet more a union of the heart, its affections and love."-St. Francis of Sales, "The Devout Life."

"In presense and in all celestiall grace

That men admire in goodlie womankinde
She did excell, and seemed of angel's race,
Living on earth like angell now divinde,
Adorned with wisedome and with chastitie,
And all the dowries of a noble mind,
Which did her beautie much more beautifie."

-Spenser.

"Prepare to meet the weak alarms
Of novel manners; recollect
The eye which magnifies her charms
Is microscopic to defect.

Fear comes at first; but soon, rejoiced,

You'll find your strong and tender loves,
Like holy rocks by Druids poised,

The least force shakes, but none removes.
Her strength is your esteem; beware

Of finding fault; her will's unnerved

By blame; from you 't would be despair;
But praise that is not quite deserved
Will all her noble nature stir

To make your utmost wishes true.
Yet think, while thus amending her,
Of matching her ideal too!

Of perfect nuptial joy the price

Is manhood perfectly fulfilled.
To keep your mistress in your wife,
Keep to the very height your oath,
And honour her with arduous life."

-Coventry Patmore.

"She was one made up

Of feminine affections, and her life

Was one full stream of love from fount to sea."

-Sir Henry Taylor.

T

CHAPTER II.

WOMAN AS WIFE.

HERE are many varieties of love. Like a crystal, it has its radiant angles and shining faces, each differing from the other, though all of the same substance. We have spoken of a mother's love; how like it is, and yet how different from, a wife's love or a daughter's love! The great passion, like the ocean, has numerous unfathomable deeps, into which no plummet of human sagacity has ever sounded. A mother's love is vigilant, untiring, self-sacrificing, provident; so is a wife's, but a wife's love, we repeat, is not a mother's love; resembles it, perhaps, in kind, but not in degree. Yet can we say that it will endure less, or achieve less, or hope less? Will the mother bear for her child's sake more than the wife for her husband's? If we read of women throwing themselves between their babes and the murderous steel to save the little life at the cost of their own, do we not read of wives who have gladly done as much, who have freely poured out their blood in defence of their husbands? If we know of mothers who have borne the in gratitude of sons, and yet uncomplainingly loved on, forgetting and forgiving, do we not also know of wives who have repined not beneath the sullen frown, the angry word, the open infidelity, even the coward blow, but have been faithful to the end? Perhaps it is from the love of the wife, from married love, that, as from a central sun, all other loves proceed. They flow from it and are fed by it. That mystical union of body and soul which has been consecrated as the type and counterpart of the union between God and His Church seems to compre