blandishments of the theatre, or the excitements of the dance,
is a child left to the charge of those who have nothing of love for
it--no sympathy for its sufferings, no joyousness in sharing in its
pleasures.

A woman forfeits all claim to the sacred character of a mother if
she abandon her offspring to the entire care of others: for ere she
can do this, she must have stifled all the best feelings of her
nature, and become "worse than the infidel"--for she gives freely to
the stranger, and neglects her own.

Therefore should a woman, if she would fulfil her duty, make her
child her first care. It is not necessary that her whole time should
be spent in attending to its wants; but it is necessary that so much
of the time should be spent, that nothing should be neglected which
could add to the child's comfort and happiness. And not only is it
needful that a woman should show a motherly fondness for her child,
so that she should attend to its wants and be solicitous for its
welfare; it is also necessary that she should know how those wants
are best to be provided for, and how that welfare is best to be
consulted: for to the natural feelings which prompt animals to
provide for their offspring, to humanity is added the noble gift of
reason; so that thought and solicitude are not merely the effects of
blind instinct, but the produce of a higher and nobler faculty.

As we have already adverted to this point, we shall only say, that
without a knowledge of how the physical wants of a child are to be
met in the best manner, a mother cannot be said to be performing her
duty; for the kindness which is bestowed may be but the result of
natural feeling, which it would be far harder to resist than to
fulfil; whereas the want of knowledge may have resulted from
ignorance and idleness, and the loss of this knowledge will never be
made up by natural kindness and love: it will be like trying to work
without hands, or to see when the eyes are blinded.

But there is yet a higher duty devolving upon woman. She has to
attend to the mental and moral wants of her offspring, as well as to
the physical. And helpless as we are born into the world if
reference be made to our physical wants, we are yet more helpless if
reference be made to our mental and moral. We come into the world
with evil passions, perverted faculties, and unholy dispositions:
for let what will be said of the blandness and attractiveness of
children, there are in those you