Even in women of the most wicked character, those who are the very fiends of their sex, we sometimes see this maternal fondness bursting out, and demonstrating at once, the difference between the wickedness of man and that of woman. Mrs. Jameson admires very much those touches of Shakspeare's pencil, which mark in the midst of all her atrocities and dark crimes, the womanly character of Lady Macbeth. How beautiful is the recollection of a mother's love, even in this fiend:
| "I have given suck, and know how tender 'tis To love the babe that milks me." |
And again she shows the woman, when she exclaims:
| "Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it"— |
Well, then, are we prepared in the fifth act for the declaration of this monster of depravity, under the stings of a tormenting conscience, when she gazes on the hand that had done the deed and exclaims:
"All the perfumes of Arabia, will not sweeten this little hand."
But let us quit such specimens as these, and go back to our subject.
Who is there among us, who can look back to the period of his infant career, and not shed a tear of gratitude for a mother's love, and a mother's care? What heart does not heave with emotion at the recollection of the first years of our education, when day by day we were clasped in our mother's arms, and with the kiss of affection imprinted upon the brow, were charged to be good boys, and learn with cheerfulness the lesson that was assigned us. Black indeed must be that heart which can forget a mother's solicitude. The recollection of her advice and admonition has often saved the individual in the hour of temptation, and we can almost forgive Marmontel for his vices and his sins, while breathing the atmosphere of a profligate and abandoned court, when we peruse in his interesting memoirs the following paragraph, occasioned by the farewell which he took of his mother in declining health. "Yet a little while, and she will be no longer mine; this mother who from my birth has breathed only for me; this adored mother whose displeasure I feared as that of heaven, and if I dare say it, yet more than heaven itself. For I thought of her much oftener than of God, and when I had some temptation to subdue or some passion to repress, it was always my mother that I fancied present. What would she say, if she knew what passes in me? What would be her confusion? What would be her grief? Such were the reflections that I opposed to myself, and my reason then resumed its empire, seconded by nature, who always did what she pleased with my heart. Those who, like me, have known this tender filial love, need not be told what was the sadness and despondency of my soul." Montaigne in his singular, but highly amusing and ingenious essays, places Epaminondas of Thebes, among the three men who were "more excellent than all the rest" of whom he had any knowledge; and the very first proof which he adduces of his excessive goodness is the declaration of Epaminondas, "that the greatest satisfaction he ever had in his whole life, was the pleasure he gave his father and mother by his victory at Leuctra."
The influence which a mother's care and a mother's love produces upon a girl, is much greater than that wrought on a boy. The girl is more constantly with her mother; she is taught to imitate and act like her; she is more constantly with the younger children of the family; her attentions, her kindnesses, her sympathies and her love, come in process of time to resemble those of the mother, much more than of the father. Hence it is fair to say, that all the effects wrought on the mother by the nursing, training, &c. of the infant, are produced in some degree on all her daughters.