earthly gift, but would tend it with a miser's patience, and have it always safe. She seemed to have found rest for her spirit, not only in the embrace of her husband but also in the light duties and gently exciting pleasures of her stately home. Often as they played from heart to heart their mutual fondness-it wasted not-it palled not, it gave no token to the watchful husband that it was otherwise than a joy for ever. There was difference in the character but not in the degree of their young loves. Hers was impetuous, while his was deeply tender. His was the quiet golden summer evening sky; hers the vivid lightning across that serene-telling alike of heats and storms. In his official duties she bore a cheerful and happy part. In his heavenward flights she strove to keep abreast with him, and when she could not, she clung to the skirts of his mantle when he went up arrayed in righteousness to meet his King and Lord. Her love caught the sunbeams of the heaven to which her companion's thoughts so often sped-it looked like a vital experimental sympathy with him-it even deceived herself-no wonder that it calmed and comforted the misgiving heart of her husband.

Yet in truth

it was a deception resting on them both. She made literature, politics, science, tributary to her love of him, and she did the same with the name and doctrines and rites of his holy faith. The very ceremonies which shadowed out the awful mysteries of redeeming grace were with her emblems of their oneness when he was with her, or sacraments of sweet remembrance when he was absent from her side. She made an idol of the priest, and mistook her redundant love for him as partly love to his God.

CHAPTER III.

A GIFT FROM HEAVEN.

THE year glided to its close. Each day renewed the peaceful happiness of each heart, and there was no need of new ties to keep alive or. heighten their mutual love; but in midwinter the still pleasures of the long evening hours gave place to the new charms of baby-laughter, or the touching strains

of baby-sorrow. An heir had been born, and all were proudly glad. A son slept in the embrace of a father's arm-near to his heart and his sleeping smile, or waking cry, brought new emotions to the old one of a single, deep affection-not drawing its life away from the former love-but rather rendering it stronger and purer than ever. To the impassioned nature of the mother, this little gift from God became, from the hour of its birth, a snare rather than a blessing. It seemed even to have shaken the depths above which were the foundations of her wifely love to have drawn up the whole being in one proud, greedy, selfish, raging passion, which became at once fanatical idolatry. And so might it always prove with the mighty fervour of a mother's love, but for the chastening of poverty and care, or the wise application of principle as a pressure, a curb, a discipline. What will not woman do and endure in her unselfish love for man! What guilty indifference to higher claims will her conscience not allow, under the cover of her devotion and self-denial towards a human being! But in the love which the child awakens there is the whole power of selfishness in addition to the transferred or reproduced self-deovtion of the earlier instinct. It would appear as if marriage was a trial by which the ungenerous elements of character must be either overcome or developed. The gentle willinghood, the sleepless watchfulness for another's happiness, is as improving to the character of a woman as it is full of seductive peril to the remaining generosity of man. It is a preparation for the safe discharge of the highest functions ever committed into human hands; and a most needful preparation we know it to be, precisely because, in the ministration of a mother's love, selfishness and benevolence are utterly confounded. It is herself she doats upon, and frets over, and indulges and coaxes.

The manner in which a young mother fulfils the duties that are so fascinating, that look so like kindness untinged with selfishness, shows how far the trial of her previous love-life has been successful in placing the native selfishness of a human heart under the control of principle and habit. she is able to use all her fervour for the child's well-being— if the endearments and solicitude which she lavishes on her

If

little one, are truly pointed at the protection and wise training of the child, they are not only excusable and bearable, but they are a glory to our race, and a joy to see. But if there is redundance in these endearments- -more than can be well explained by the calls of nature and circumstances—more than can be interpreted into Heaven-taught self-devotion to the noblest of occupations-more than is compatible with the becoming dignity of a matron-more than find place without intrusion and without making its presence painfully felt in a heart that but yesterday was too strait for the love she bore to her husband,—then, and so far, the sweet preparatory trial and nuptial love have been vain; for the inborn selfishness has only been in abeyance. And no sooner does it hear the imperious cry, which it should have known by this time how to resist, than it leaps forth rampant, well nigh overturning the altar of that first love; it can never be recalled now; it has gone forth on its self-deluding and most destructive mission; it mingles fire with the sun-light of true mother-love; it blights and twists till the object of a world of anxious and unceasing love becomes an eye-sore and a heart-breaking curse to the authors of its being. What is all that stale and sickening conceit that dowdy, frouzy, slipshod, worrying, bothering, physicking, coaxing, boasting, prosing, moping, nervous, impertinent devoteeism which has a cradled baby for its idol, and a circle of equally nonsensical or most thoroughly disgusted human beings for the theatre of its display? Are we really compelled to bow down and worship this painted, grinning, loose-limbed monster, as if it were the real divinity, the Heaven-implanted principle of maternal love? Are we to sanction its gross absurdities-its revolting and ruinous excesses-under the fear of being charged with a selfish sense of the irksomeness of a duty in itself incumbent, imperative, paramount? Are thoughtful men and women to stand by with sealed lips, and the frightful affectation of approval, when not merely their taste is offended, but their better judgment mocked, their inmost heart wrung with pity for the babe and contempt for its weak mother? No; let there be a little gentle reasoning allowed in such a wilderness of insipid romance; let the mother have at least the chance of knowing

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It

that every one of the giggling hypocrites around sees through it all in another-slow though they be to believe it in their own cases-see through it all, we say, and could, if they were honest, startle her self-complacency not a little, by assuring her that it is not love for her child, but most unmitigated and repulsive self-indulgence which rules her whole life. Don't suffer the ridiculous imposture to remain on the young mother's mind without at least protesting, that what little love remains of Nature's giving, is now quite smothered, and will speedily die out under the loathsome selfishness which she has been profane enough, and fool enough, to call by the name of love. Save, if it be not too late, children yet unborn from being the victims of this terrible mistake. She's such a good mother-one in a thousand." How often we hear it! What does it mean? In nine cases out of ten, it means that she neglects all other duties for one, and by that very neglect utterly unfits herself for the right discharge of that one. means that she doats, or, in other words, she has unfortunately come to see herself in her child, and instantly her love is redoubled-drained away from the fair garden, all of which seeks its verdure and sunny glories from that perverted river of life. It means that she simply wastes her bodily health, throws down the defences of decency and orderly habit, invites sloth to the body, and folly to the mind, and waywardness to the temper, and winter to her heart. She has chosen to consecrate a natural impulse by the name of dutyas an excuse for an indulgence which might remain secret or secure of sanction from others; and, as in all other cases where people wilfully or carelessly deliver themselves over to a falsehood, she becomes blind to the truth, resentful of advice, incapable of seeing the fatal issues of her conduct. which are patent to all others, and fill them with dismay and dread. The world and life form our probation. Who denies it? But the probation is not like the occasional or regular drill of the soldier. It is constant; there are no holidays; there are no nights of repose from this discipline; and one of the most solemn applications of life's great test is in the relation of mother and child. There the true character is quickly ripened, and may be seen at a glance. Previously it was

hidden even from herself; as for others, how could they discern the baseness of selfishness in one who was so quiet, so bewitching, so astounding, so enchanting; most of all was it unlikely that he could see it, who has most of all to deplore it-for the very laws of the passion which led him to select her, invested her with an amiable grace-which belonged to the passion, and never in any case to the object. But the mother has all restraint, all disguise, flung off by the very tiny hand which creeps to her bosom, and knocks at the heart's door for all the love she can give.

If selfishness has really been made subject to reason, but especially if it has been crucified with Christ, the love which nature bids to exist for the training of the frail immortal will be no less deep and fervent, because it is far above the grotesque antics of selfishness; the follies that, in polite words at least, the world is only too ready to excuse. The looker on at such a scene-a scene which Raphael could not worthily depict, though his mind was filled with its only complete ideal in the Mary and the Jesus, whose mutual love is the model and standard all profess to revere- -will be able to tell (if asked, otherwise, perhaps, he might be gladly content with the unconscious knowledge) that love is unselfish in the vigour and the very calmness of a mother's self-command; and, to assure the inquirer that so far as human agency can effect so blessed a result, the babe on her knee will be an honour to the age in which he lives, and will go, when he has done here, right up to the heaven of God. But the reflective mind will be even more instantaneously convinced in the opposite case; indeed, the misfortune (considering the generally very serviceable restraints of courtesy), is that he cannot doubt for a moment-when he sees that sentimental, morbid, all-absorbing, all-devouring imitation of mother-love-that that woman has proved herself already incurably selfish, is abandoned even now to the belief of a most palpable lie, and will, so far as her influence reaches, inflict a mortal curse on society, and damn her baby's soul! Are we wrong, then, in denouncing as most disingenuous selfishness, three-fourths of that overweening, fidgetting fondness which all men conspire to gloss over and excuse, by using a word which is truly enough