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Alas! we both with cold and hunger quake. Why do you weep? Mamma will soon

awake."

The mother begins her process of training with the infant in her arms. It is she who directs, so to speak, its first mental and spir

impressible years of childhood and youth,

"She'll wake no more!" the hopeless mourner itual pulsations. She conducts it along the cried, Upturned his eyes, and clasped his hands, and hopes to deliver it to the rough conand sighed. tests and tumultuous scenes of life armed Stretched on the ground a while entranced by those good principles which her child

he lay,

And pressed warm kisses on the lifeless clay; And then upsprung with wild convulsive start, And all the father kindled in his heart.

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"O Heaven," he cried, "my first rash vow forgive!

These bind to earth, for these I pray to live." Round his chill babes he wrapped his crimson vest,

has received from maternal care and love.

If we draw within the circle of our contemplation the mothers of a civilized nation, what do we see? We behold so many artificers working, not on frail and perishable matter, but on the immortal mind, moulding and fashioning beings who are to exist for ever. We applaud the artist whose skill and genius present the mimic

And clasped them, sobbing, to his aching man upon the canvas; we admire and celebreast.

ERASMUS DARWIN.

THE INFLUENCE OF WOMAN. FROM AN ORATION DELIVERED AT RICHMOND, VIRGINIA.

IT

is by the promulgation of sound morals in the community, and more especially by the training and instruction of the young, that woman performs her part toward the preservation of a free government. It is generally admitted that public liberty, the perpetuity of a free constitution, rests on the virtue and intelligence of the community which enjoys it. How is that virtue to be inspired, and how is that intelligence to be communicated? Bonaparte once asked Madame de Staël in what manner he could most, promote the happiness of France. Her re ply is full of political wisdom. She said, "Instruct the mothers of the French people." Mothers are, indeed, the affectionate and effective teachers of the human race.

brate the sculptor who works out that same image in enduring marble; but how insignificant are these achievements, though the highest and the fairest in all the departments of art, in comparison with the great vocation of human mothers! They work, not upon the canvas that shall fail or the marble that shall crumble into dust, but upon mind, upon spirit, which is to last for ever, and which is to bear, for good or evil, throughout its duration, the impress of a mother's plastic hand.

I have already expressed the opinionwhich all allow to be correct-that our security for the duration of the free institutions which bless our country depends upon the habits of virtue and the prevalence of knowledge and of education. Knowledge does not comprise all which is contained in the larger term of education. The feelings are to be disciplined; the passions are to be restrained; true and worthy motives are to be inspired; a profound religious

feeling is to be instilled and pure morality inculcated under all circumstances. All this is comprised in education. Mothers who are faithful to this great duty will tell their children that neither in political nor in any other concerns of life can man ever withdraw himself from the perpetual obligations of conscience and of duty; that in every act, whether public or private, he incurs a just responsibility; and that in no condition is he warranted in trifling with important rights and obligations. They will impress upon their children the truth that the exercise of the elective franchise is a social duty of as solemn a nature as man can be called to perform; that a man may not innocently trifle with his vote; that every free elector is a trustee, as well for others as himself; and that every man and every measure he supports has an important bearing on the interests of others as well as on his own. It is in the inculcation of high and pure morals such as these that in a free republic woman performs her sacred duty and fulfils her destiny.

AND

GENIUS.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

ND what is genius but finer love-a love impersonal, a love of the flower and perfection of things and a desire to draw a new picture or copy of the same? It looks to the cause and life, it proceeds from within outward, whilst talent goes from without inward. Talent finds its models and methods and ends in society, exists for exhibition and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its

own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within, going

abroad only for audience and spectator, as we adapt our voice and phrase to the distance and character of the ear we speak to. All your learning of all literatures would never enable you to anticipate one of its thoughts, or expressions, and yet each is natural and familiar as household words. Here about us coils for ever the ancient enigma, so old and so unutterable. Behold! there is the sun and the rain and the rocks. the old sun, the old stones. How How easy were it to describe all this fitly! yet no word can pass. Nature is a mute, and man, her articulate-speaking brother-lo! he also is a mute. Yet when genius arrives, its speech is like a river: it has no straining to describe more than there is straining in nature to exist. When thought is best, there is most of it. Genius sheds wisdom like perfume, and advertises us that it flows out of a deeper source than the foregoing silence that it knows so deeply and speaks so musically because it is itself a mutation of the thing it describes. It is sun and moon and wave and fire in music, as astronomy is thought and harmony in masses of matter.

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