"To the women of the richer class, those who seem to be so gently protected by their family, those brilliant ones whom people suppose so happy, to these we give no spiritual food.
"And to the women of the poorer class, solitary, industrious, and destitute, who try hard to gain their bread, we do not even give our assistance to help them to find their material food.
"These women, who are or will be mothers, are left by us to fast, (either in soul or in body,) and we are punished especially by the generation that issues from them, for our neglecting to give them the staff of life.
"I like to believe that good-will, generally, is not wanting—only time and attention. People live in a hurry, and can hardly be said to live: they follow with a huntsman's eagerness this or that petty object, and neglect what is important.
"You, man of business or study, who are so energetic and indefatigable, you have no time, say you, to associate your wife with your daily progress; you leave her to her ennui, idle conversations, empty sermons, and silly books; so that, falling below herself, less than woman, even less than a child, she will have neither moral action, influence, nor maternal authority, over her own offspring. Well! you will have the time, as old age advances, to try in vain to do all over again what is not done twice, to follow in the steps of a son, who, from college to the schools, and from thence into the world, hardly knows his family; and who, if he travels a little, and meets you on his return, will ask you your name. The mother alone could have made you a son; but to do so you ought to have made her what a woman ought to be, strengthened her with your sentiments and ideas, and nourished her with your life."
True, O most subtle and sapient Frenchman, the remedy lies in the direction you have pointed out; but we have doubts if you have fully discovered its nature, or are prepared to apply it in its necessary extent. The husband must make the wife the companion of his heart and thoughts, of his hopes and exertions. Too long has this sympathy and confidence been unknown in France, where your women have been but the toys and playthings of your lighter or looser hours, and where often to their own husbands they have not even been so much. But, as you partly see, this is not all that is needed to be corrected. In order to be the fitting guide and guardian of the mother of his family, the husband must share in those higher feelings which he seeks to regulate and reclaim. You do not hope or wish to see your wife and children devoid of religion. But if you would not surrender them to the guidance of others in those momentous concerns, you must care for them and conduct their course yourself, and must learn to travel the road along which they are to be led. The husband must become himself the priest and the director: not by inculcating a vague theism or a cold morality, but by establishing in his household the purity and the practice of a Christian faith. If the domestic throne is to be upheld on its rightful foundation, the altar must be reared by its side. The philosopher and historian must stoop to learn from his own children that simplicity of which they are such powerful teachers, and which will amply repay him for all the lessons of a more mature wisdom that his learning and experience can impart. Openly and earnestly sympathizing with their devout impressions, he will strengthen and support by his intellectual energies the soft and more susceptible natures of those placed under his charge, and will thus shield them from the attempts to mislead and inflame, to which they must inevitably be exposed if left to find their only sympathy in extraneous influences. This re-establishment of a patriarchal piety is one of the great boons which the true spirit of Protestantism purchased for its followers, and which alone can protect the weaker members of the household from becoming a prey to priestly interference and false enthusiasm.
The book contains a touching tribute, such as able men have often paid to the maternal affection that formed their minds:—
"Whilst writing all this, I have had in my mind a woman, whose strong and serious mind would not have failed to support me in these contentions; I lost her thirty years ago, (I was a child then;) nevertheless, ever living in my memory, she follows me from age to age.
"She suffered with me in my poverty, and was not allowed to share in my better fortune. When young, I made her sad, and now I cannot console her. I know not even where her bones are: I was too poor then to buy earth to bury her!
"And yet I owe her much. I feel deeply that I am the son of woman. Every instant, in my ideas and words (not to mention my features and gestures,) I find again my mother in myself. It is my mother's blood that gives me the sympathy I feel for bygone ages, and the tender remembrance of all those who are now no more.