DAUGHTER.
To understand the depth of female affection, as it is manifested in a daughter’s love, it is necessary rightly to understand a law of affection to which as much consideration seems not often to be given as its importance demands.
It is a law, which has been a frequent subject of meditation by observers of the human mind—the law is, that it is the nature of affection to descend, seldom to ascend.
A few extracts from different authors will explain this law:—
Du Moulin, in his excellent little volume upon Peace and Content, says, “Of children expect no good, but the satisfaction to have done them good, and to see them do well for themselves. For in this relation, the nature of beneficence is to descend, seldom to remount.”
So Bishop Taylor, in his Life of Christ, when speaking of mothers who do not nurse their own children, says, “And if love descends more strongly than it ascends, and commonly falls from the parents upon the children in cataracts, and returns back again up to the parents but in small dews,—if the child’s affection keeps the same proportions towards such unkind mothers, it will be as little as atoms in the sun, and never expresses itself but when the mother needs it not,—that is, in the sunshine of a clear fortune.”
So Fuller says, in his chapter on Moderation, the silken string that runs through the pearl chain of all the virtues, “yea as love, doth descend, and men doat most on their grand-children.”
The same sentiment, with the reason in which the truth originates, has been noticed by our poets.
The sweet poet, Barry Cornwall, says,—
“The love of parents, hath a deep still source,
And falleth like a flood upon their child.
Sometimes the child is grateful, then his love
Comes like the spray returning.”
In Thomson’s “Spring,” the same sentiment, containing the reason of this provision of nature, is beautifully explained. Having described the bird’s nest, and the mother stealing from the barn a straw, ’till “soft and warm the habitation grew,” and having described the little birds in their nest,—
“Oh what passions then,
What melting sentiments of kindly care
Do the new parents’ seize; away they fly
Affectionate, and undesiring bear
The most delicious morsel to their young,
Which equally distributed, again
The search begins.”
And when the little birds are able to fly, the poet thus proceeds,—
“But now the feather’d youth their former bounds
Ardent, disdain, and weighing oft their wings
Demand the free possession of the sky:
This one glad office more, and then dissolves
Parental love at once, now needless grown,—
Unlavish wisdom never works in vain.”
He has expressed the same sentiment in his description of the eagle,—
“High from the summit of a craggy cliff
Hung o’er the deep,
The royal eagle draws his vigorous young
Strong-pounced, and ardent with paternal fire;
Now fit to raise a kingdom of their own
He drives them from his fort, the tow’ring seat
For ages, of his empire: which in peace
Unstained he holds, while many a league to sea,
He wings his course and preys in distant isles.”
Such is the nature of affection in general; but in a daughter it is so powerful, that it never quits her.
According to the old adage—
“My son is my son, ’till he gets him a wife;
My daughter’s my daughter, the whole of her life.”
The pious excellent Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England, convinced of the unlawfulness of the King’s marriage, resigned the Great Seal, and resolved to pass the remainder of his life amidst the charities of home and the consolations of religion.—Erasmus, speaking of his friend says, “there is not any man living so affectionate to his children; you would say there was in that place Plato’s academy,—I should rather call his house a school or university of Christian religion, for their special care is piety and virtue.” Upon his refusal to take the oath of supremacy, he was tried for high treason and condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, and his head to be stuck on a pole on London bridge. He was executed July 5th, 1535. His body was begged by his daughter Margaret, and deposited in the church of Chelsea; where a monument, with an inscription written by himself had been erected some time before. She found means also to procure his head, after it had remained upon London bridge fourteen days: this she carefully preserved in a leaden chest, till she conveyed it to Canterbury, and placed it under a chapel adjoining to St. Dunstan’s church in that city; where, after having survived her father sixteen years, she according to her desire was buried in the same vault with her father’s head in her arms.