ture; and in reading these pages, which dazzle me and absorb my attention, I find myself regretting, for this child, the stories of Mademoiselle Bonne and Lady Sensée. Do you not think that after having been bowed down during several hours beneath the instructions of so powerful an intellect, the dauphin would not feel the desire to recreate himself with his valets?

A preceptor may descend without effort to the level of his pupil; he may form a religious heart, an honest man, a good citizen, and he will have done his all. And what is there in this mission which a woman would not be able to do? Who better than a mother can teach us to prefer honour to fortune, to cherish our fellow-creatures, to relieve the unfortunate, to elevate our souls to the source of the beautiful and the infinite? An ordinary preceptor counsels and moralizes; that which he offers to our memory, a mother ingrafts in our hearts: she makes us love that which he can at most but make us believe, and it is by love that she leads us to virtue.

Struck by the little care generally bestowed upon the education of women, and by the irresistible influence which they exert, the celebrated Sheridan conceived the idea of establishing for them in England a national education. He transmitted his plan to the queen, and invited her to place herself at the head of the institution. "Women govern us," said he, "let us try to render them perfect ; the more they are enlightened, so much the more so shall we be. On the cultivation of the mind of women depends the wisdom of men. It is by woman that nature writes on the heart of man."

This, as may be perceived, was a great idea, and it would be difficult to estimate the influence which its execution would have exerted on Old England. In it were comprised a moral and political revolution, an improved government,

the abolition of slavery, humanity in Ireland, civilisation in the Indies, morality by the side of industry, &c.; for woman thus instructed will never engrave on the heart of man anything but the dictates of evangelical charity, and of the noblest sacrifices to the interests of humanity.

Our pretensions, however, do not rise so high. We neither reckon upon kings, queens, nor universities, to assist the country, but solely upon maternal influence-an influence which is exerted on the heart, which through the heart may direct the mind, and which, in order to save and regenerate the world, only requires to be properly directed.

This influence exists everywhere,—it everywhere determines our sentiments, our opinions, our tastes,—it everywhere decides our fate. "The future destiny of a child,” said Napoleon, "is always the work of its mother;" and the great man took pleasure in repeating, that it was owing to his mother that he had raised himself so high. A reference to history will justify these words; and without supporting our argument by the memorable examples of Charles IX. and of Henry IV., of the pupil of Catherine, and that of Jeanne d'Albret, we may ask; was not Louis XIII. like his mother, weak, ungrateful, and unhappy? Always in contradiction, and yet always submissive? not recognize in Louis XIV. the passions of a Spanish woman, the gallantry at the same time sensual and romantic, the terrors of the bigot, the pride of the despot, who requires the same prostration before the throne as before the altar? It has been said, and I believe it, that the woman who gave birth to the two Corneilles possessed a great soul, an elevated mind, and a dignified manner; that she resembled the mother of the Gracchi; that these were On the other hand, the www women of the same mould. wegher of the young Arouet, spirituelle, jesting, coquettish,

Do you

and of loose manners, impressed the genius of her son with all her peculiarities; she excited in his soul the fire which, while it gave light, consumed; which produced so many chefs-d'œuvre, and dishonoured itself by so many immoral tales.

Twenty volumes would not suffice to collect all the prominent examples of maternal influence. A child of the people, Kant, loved to repeat that he owed everything to the pious care of his mother. This good woman, though herself without instruction, had nevertheless instructed him in the greatest of all sciences-that of morality and virtue. In her walks with her son, she explained to him, with the aid of good sense alone, what she knew of the wonders of nature, and she thus inspired him with the love of God his Creator. "I shall never forget," said Kant, in his old age, "that it is she who caused to fructify the good which is in my soul."

Not less fortunate than Kant was our illustrious Cuvier, who received from his mother the first lessons by which his genius was developed with an instinct peculiarly maternal, she directed his tastes towards the study of nature.

"I used to draw under her superintendence," says Cuvier, in the MS. memoirs which he has left to his family, "and I read aloud books of history and general literature. It is thus that she developed in me that love of reading, and that curiosity for all things, which were the spring of my life." This great man attributed to his mother all the pleasure of his studies and the glory of his discoveries.

But the most striking example of this beneficent or fatal influence may be found in the lives of two of the greatest poets of the present age. To the one, fate had given a mother, foolish, mocking, full of caprice and pride, whose narrow mind was only expanded by vanity and hatred: a

mother who pitilessly made a jest of the natural infirmity of her child; who alternately irritated and caressed him, and at last despised and cursed him. These corrosive passions of the woman became profoundly ingrafted in the heart of the young man; hatred and pride, anger and disdain, boiled within his breast, and like the burning lava of a volcano, suddenly overspread the world with the torrents of a ma levolent harmony.

Upon the other poet beneficent fate had bestowed a mother, tender without weakness, and pious without formality,—one of those rare mothers which exist to serve as a model. This woman, young, beautiful, and enlightened, shed over her son all the light of love; the virtues with which she inspired him, the prayer which she taught him, addressed themselves not merely to his intellect, but by becoming implanted in his soul, elicited divine sounds-a harmony which ascends unto God. Thus surrounded from the cradle with examples of the most touching piety, the child walked in the ways of the Lord under the tuition of his mother; his genius resembled incense, the perfumes of which are diffused over the earth, but which only burns for heaven.

Come then, now, with the morality of a college or the philosophy of a pedant, and modify these maternal influences; try to re-form Byron and Lamartine; you will always arrive too late; the vessel is soaked through; the cloth has acquired its fold;* and the passions of our mothers are become to us a second nature. Here is, however, a power, always acting beneath our eyes, an invariable love, a creative will, (the only one, perhaps, on earth which seeks but for our happiness,) left without direction

"Certain age accompli

Le vase est imbibé, l'étoffe a pris son pli."

LA FONTAINE.

since the beginning of the world, for want of enlightenment and education.

In conclusion; What is the child to the preceptor? It is an ignorant being to be instructed. What is the child to the mother? It is a soul which requires to be formed. Good teachers make good scholars, but it is only mothers that form men; this constitutes all the difference of their mission; it follows that the care of educating the child belongs altogether to the mother, and that if it has been usurped by men, it is because education has been confounded with instruction-things essentially different, and between which it is important to make the distinction, for instruction may be interrupted, and pass without danger into other hands; but education should be continued by the same person; when it is interrupted it ceases, and whoever gives it up after having began it, will see his child. fall into the tortuous ways of error, or, what is more deplorable, into an indifference to truth.

Let us, then, not seek out of the family for the governor of our children; the one which nature presents to us will relieve us from the necessity of inquiring further, and that one we shall everywhere find; in the cottage of the poor, as in the palace of the rich; everywhere endowed with the same perfection, and ready to make the same sacrifices. Young mothers, young wives, let not the stern title of governor alarm your weakness; I would not impose upon you pedantic studies or austere duties: it is to happiness that I wish to lead you. I come to reveal to you your rights, your power, your sovereignty; it is in inviting you to roam through the happy paths of virtue and love that I prostrate myself at your feet, and that I ask of you the peace of the world, the order of families, the glory of your children, and the happiness of the human race.

Some inattentive minds will perhaps accuse me of wish