if no other, that we cannot proceed in any other way to attain our purposes. We may stop all growth, or we may produce deformity, but we cannot make a good growth in any other way.

In children, restraint in one position, except lying down, soon produces fatigue; not because they want to be at play, but because they are obliged to keep in constant action those muscles by which the head and trunk are supported. This, at least, is one reason, an important one, and perhaps the principal one. I feel assured, that the lateral flexure of the spine in young girls, so much noticed the last thirty or forty years, is to be attributed much more to the effort to sit upright too long, than to tight lacing, &c. You will not suspect me of being an advocate of this vile practice; but I cannot charge to it an evil which has commonly occurred before that practice is begun. Unhappily, the evil is hereditary in a vast many families.

Children should not, then, be confined long to one position; when sitting or standing, they should not be required to maintain constantly an erect position of the body; for their muscles require more frequent alternations, (each one by itself,) than those of adults. So much physiology teaches. But physiology does not point out just how many minutes a particular muscle may be kept contracted. In other words, there are not any general rules, precise in this respect, which are deduced from observation or experience. Nor can it well be otherwise. We differ so much in temperament, and each one differs so much at different times, according to the state of his health, and from various accidental causes, that such precise estimates cannot be made. An average might be obtained from long-continued and accurate observations of large numbers of children; but this would require much labor and time, unless done in a loose way. This last, the loose way, is exactly what is done by those who observe the experiments constantly going on in our houses and schools. It is from estimates made in this way, that we make up our opinions. These are more to be relied on than any rules which can be derived from scientific physiology, though this may furnish an explanation of the mode in which evils are produced by too long confinement. I should therefore submit my opinion to that of an experienced teacher, who had been instructed in the general principles applicable to the subject, and who had observed carefully the effects of confinement, for different lengths of time, to school exercises. Only, in such a case, I should require that teacher to tell me exactly how his pupils were employed, from one ten minutes to another.

A MOTHER'S LOVE.

BY REV. E. H. CHAPIN.

Nobody but a parent can realize what these affections are, can tell what a fountain of emotion the new-born child unseals, what chords of strange love are drawn out from the heart, that lay there concealed before. One may have all powers of intellect, a refined moral culture, a noble and wide-reaching philanthropy, and yet a child born to him shall awaken within him a depth of tenderness, a sentiment of love, a yearning affection, that shall surprise him as to the capacity and the mystery of his nature.

And the relation of a mother to her child, what other is like it? Without it, how undeveloped is the great element of affection, how small a horn of its orb is filled and lighted! What was she until that new love woke up within her, and her heart and soul thrilled with it, and first truly lived in it? Of all the degrees of human love, how amply is this the highest! In all the depths of human love, how surely is this the nethermost! When illustrations fail us, how confidently do we seize upon this! The mother, nurturing her child in tenderness, watching over it with untiring love! O, there is affection stronger than any of this earth. It has a power, a beauty, a holiness, like no other human sentiment. When that child has grown to maturity, and has gone out from her in profligacy and in scorn, when the world has denounced him, and justice sets its price upon his head, and lovers and companions fall off from him in utter loathing, we do not ask, we know, there is one heart that cannot reject him. No sin of his can paralyze the chord that vibrates there for him. No alienation can cancel the affection that was born at his birth, that pillowed him in his infancy, centred in him its life, clasped him with its strength, and shed upon him its blessings, its hopes, and its prayers.

And no one feels the death of a child as a mother feels it. Even the father cannot realize it thus. There is a vacancy in his home, and a heaviness in his heart. There is a chain of association that

at set times comes round with its broken link; there are memories of endearment, a keen sense of loss, a weeping over crushed hopes, and a pain of wounded affection. But the mother feels that one has been taken away who was still closer to her heart. Her's has been the office of constant ministration. Every gradation of feature has.

developed before her eyes. She has detected every new gleam of intelligence. She heard the first utterance of every new word. She has been the refuge of his fears; the supply of his wants. And every task of affection has woven a new link, and made dear to her its object. And when he dies a portion of her own life, as it were, dies. How can she give him up with all these memories, these associations? The timid hands that have so often taken her's in trust and love, how can she fold them on his breast, and give them up to the cold clasp of death? The feet whose wanderings she has watched so narrowly, how can she see them straightened to go down into the dark valley? The head that she has pressed to her lips and her bosom, that she has watched in burning sickness and in peaceful slumber, a hair of which she could not see harmed, O, how can she consign it to the chamber of the grave? The form that not for one night has been beyond her vision or her knowledge, how can she put it away for the long night of the sepulchre, to see it here no more? Man has cares and toils that draw away his thoughts and employ them; she sits in loneliness, and all these memories, all these suggestions crowd upon her. How can she bear all this? She could not, were it not that her faith is as her affection; and if the one is more deep and tender than in man, the other is more simple and spontaneous, and takes confidently hold of the hand of God.

Original.

PARENTS MUST BE UNITED.

BY MRS. L. PILLSBURY.

It is exceedingly important for parents to be united in their plan, both of government and instruction. Success cannot reasonably be expected without it. An indifferent plan, in which parents are agreed, will be better than a superior one pursued by one, while the other dissents from it.'

A wide difference of opinion need not arise between parents who feel their responsibility, and who make the Bible their rule. They will together ask help of God; together study, the Scriptures, and endeavor to gain perfect unanimity of sentiment; but should any difference exist, they will be sure, if possible, to have it obviated

before an occasion arises, of displaying that difference before their children. Could fathers and mothers who are young in experience see the blasted hopes, the ruin of character, and the wreck of happiness, caused by disagreement between parents, they would endeavor, with the utmost care, to shun a rock so fatal.

I have seen a child, a first-born son, placed in the care of parents, who, though respectable in the eye of the world, differed widely in their ideas of family government. When the father reproved or punished, the mother took the part of her child, and that, too, in his presence. And what was the consequence? Let years of misery in that unhappy family, tell. Let the scalding tears of agony,which fell from the eyes of that mother, tell. Let the premature death of that young man, who early learned to cast off parental authority and rush into scenes of dissipation, tell. Not unfrequent are the instances of mothers granting their children indulgences in the absence of their father, which he disallows. Little do such mothers realize the injury done to them, or the bitterness they are preparing for themselves. This cannot be practised to any considerable extent, without artifice and deceit, if not direct falsehood. Now, what the effect of deceit in a mother will be on the minds of her children, may be easily imag ined. Beside, it is a breach of that confidence which a husband ought ever to be able to repose in his wife; and much to her cost will that mother feel that she has weakened the strength of that arm on which she would gladly rely, when the turbulence of unruly sons will no longer be checked by her own feeble influence.

But the reverse of this is possible. A father, in the easy indifference of his feelings, may not be alive to those dangers from evil companions, of which a watchful mother is ever apprehensive. That liberty to roam abroad, which she could by no means give, he may obtain from his father, and thus set her and her authority alike at defiance. We can scarcely imagine an error more fraught with distressing consequences than this. Beside the dangers of bad company, to which he is exposed, the allowance to disobey and treat his mother with contempt, is nourishing in him that pride and scorn of restraint, which will, ere-long, rise to such a height as will rend with the keenest agony the heart even of the misguided father. I cannot conclude without entreating fathers and mothers, with feelings more deep than words can express, to be agreed, in leading in the paths of virtue, the steps of their beloved children.

Londonderry, N. H., June, 1845.

MY MOTHER.

BY MRS ELIZA T. P. SMITH.

I have often heard the idea expressed, that a mother may live after she is dead, in her children; but I never saw the idea more beautifully illustrated than in the following translation from La Martine's Travels in the East."

'Yes, it is thou, O my angel guardian,

Whose heart dost sympathise ever with mine.'

Whenever a strong impression affects me, I feel the need of some one to whom I could tell or write that which moves me; one who could find joy in that which rejoices me; an echo of that which has affected me; the sentiment isolated is not complete. Man was created a social being. Alas! when I thus look for another self, I find a void. Julia and Marianne* are occupied with themselves, and Julia is yet so young, that I only say to her what is appropriate to childhood. What is future, will soon be the present, but the past, – where is it?

The person who would the most enjoy my happiness at this moment, is my mother. In all which happens to me, happy or sad, my thoughts turn involuntarily to her. I think I see her; I hear her; I talk with her; I write to her. Those of whom one thinks so often are not absent; one whose remembrance lives so completely, so powerfully in our hearts, is not dead to us. She is always connected, as during her life, with all my impressions, which seem to me thus completely and entirely her own; which embellish, color, and warm in her brilliant imagination, even now, after a separation of six years!

I often seek her, in imagination, in the quiet and sacred retirement of Milly, where she educated us, and where she remained to think of me, when the vicissitudes of my youth separated me from her. I see her there, anxiously waiting for, receiving, reading, and commenting upon my letters, and enjoying even more than myself the impressions made upon me! Vain dream! She is not there. She

* Julia, the daughter, Marianne, Mdme Lamartine, probably, like most French women, volatile and gay, lived in the present, and were interested mostly in the seen and temporal, while he found enjoyment in the unseen and eternal.