unfolded and grows up, it becomes a mighty tree, so that
the birds of the air may come and lodge in its branches."

The hard and insensible man may know little of the debt he owes to his
father; but he that is capable of calling up the past, and beholding the
things that are not as if they now were, will see the matter in a very
different light. Incalculable are the privations (in a great majority
of instances), the toils, the pains, the anxieties, that every child
imposes on his father from the first hour of his existence. If he could
know the ceaseless cares, the tender and ardent feelings, the almost
incredible efforts and exertions, that have accompanied him in his
father's breast through the whole period of his growth, instead of
thinking that he owed his parent nothing, he would stand still and
wonder that one human creature could do so much for another.

I grant that all this may be done for a child by a stranger, and that
then in one sense the obligation would be greater. It is however barely
possible that all this should be done. The stranger wants the first
exciting cause, the consideration, "This creature by the great scheme of
nature belongs to me, and is cast upon my care." And, as the tie in the
case of the stranger was not complete in the beginning, so neither can
it be made so in the sequel. The little straggler is like the duckling
hatched in the nest of a hen; there is danger every day, that as the
nursling begins to be acquainted with its own qualities, it may plunge
itself into another element, and swim away from its benefactor.

Even if we put all these considerations out of the question, still the
affection of the child to its parent of adoption, wants the kernel, and,
if I may so speak, the soul, of the connection which has been formed
and modelled by the great hand of nature. If the mere circumstance of
filiation and descent creates no debt, it however is the principle of a
very close connection. One of the most memorable mysteries of nature,
is how, out of the slightest of all connections (for such, literally
speaking, is that between father and child), so many coincidences should
arise. The child resembles his parent in feature, in temperament, in
turn of mind, and in class of disposition, while at the same time in
many particulars, in these same respects, he is a new and individual
creature. In one view therefore the child is merely the father
multiplied and repeated. Now one of the indefeas