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,