A GREAT DUTY WHICH IS IMPOSED UPON MOTHERS.—Listen, good mothers: this is not a question of one of those idle studies, the only aim of which is to stock the memory; it concerns an important question, the most important which can be agitated on the earth; so important, that the manner in which you resolve it will decide, without appeal of your moral life and death, of the moral life and death of your children. It is not only a matter that regards yourselves, but also the flesh of your flesh, the blood of your blood; those poor little creatures, whom you have brought into this world, with passions, vices, love, hatred, pain, and death; for these are, in truth, what they have received from you with the life of the body; and these will, indeed, be miserable presents, if you do not also give them the life of the soul; that is to say, arms wherewith to fight, and a light whereby to direct themselves.
You are mothers according to the laws of our material nature, with all the love of a hen which watches over its little ones, and covers them with its wings. I come to ask you to be mothers according to the laws of our divine nature, with all the love of a soul called upon to form souls.
Assure yourselves well whether or not you owe to your children only the milk of your breasts, and the instruction of the intelligence; and if you interrogate the Gospel and nature, take heed to their answer—"Man does not live by bread alone, but by the word of truth."
Truth is that which renders man free; it is the voice which calls us to the love of God and of our neighbor, and to virtue.
Error, on the contrary, is that which renders us slaves to the passions of others and to our own; it is that which causes us to sacrifice our conscience to fortune, to honors, to glory, to vice.
Thus, virtue springs from truth; crime from error; whence we may infer that a good treatise on education can only be in the end the search after truth.
The destiny of your children depends then on the solicitude with which you engage in this search. You may open out to them the road to happiness, and precede them in it. A delightful task, which calls for all the powers of your soul, and which will place you in the presence of God, of nature, of your children, and of yourselves.
And mark well all that nature has done towards accomplishing this difficult work. In the first place, she has brought you near to the truth which is in her, by detaching your sex from almost all the ambitions which debase our own; and secondly, she has given your love to the tenderness of little children, at the same time that she has filled their hearts with innocence, and their minds with curiosity. Can you doubt the object of your mission, when you perceive the sweet harmonies which unite them to you? Nature attaches them to your bosoms, awakens them by your caresses; she wills that they should owe everything to you, so that, after having received from you life and thought, these earthly angels await your inspirations, in order to believe and to love.—L. Aimé Martin.
TO CORRESPONDENTS.—The following articles are accepted: "And I heard a voice saying, Come up hither," "Secret Love," "The Lost Pleiad," "To a Friend on his Marriage," and "To ——." A number of long articles on hand have not been examined; will be reported next month.