r's love survives in the imagination of
manhood. The mother of Sir WILLIAM JONES, having formed a plan for the
education of her son, withdrew from great connexions that she might live
only for that son. Her great principle of education, was to excite by
curiosity; the result could not fail to be knowledge. "Read, and you will
know," she constantly replied to her filial pupil. And we have his own
acknowledgment, that to this maxim, which produced the habit of study, he
was indebted for his future attainments. KANT, the German metaphysician,
was always fond of declaring that he owed to the ascendancy of his
mother's character the severe inflexibility of his moral principles. The
mother of BURNS kindled his genius by reciting the old Scottish ballads,
while to his father he attributed his less pleasing cast of character.
Bishop WATSON traced to the affectionate influence of his mother, the
religious feelings which he confesses he inherited from her. The mother of
EDGEWORTH, confined through life to her apartment, was the only person who
studied his constitutional volatility. When he hastened to her death-bed,
the last imperfect accents of that beloved voice reminded him of the past
and warned him of the future, and he declares that voice "had a happy
influence on his habits,"--as happy, at least, as his own volatile nature
would allow. "To the manner in which my mother formed me at an early age,"
said Napoleon, "I principally owe my subsequent elevation. My opinion is,
that the future good or bad conduct of a child entirely depends upon the
mother."

There is this remarkable in the strong affections of the mother in the
formation of the literary character, that, without even partaking of, or
sympathising with the pleasures the child is fond of, the mother will
often cherish those first decided tastes merely from the delight of
promoting the happiness of her son; so that that genius, which some would
produce on a preconceived system, or implant by stratagem, or enforce by
application, with her may be only the watchful labour of love.[A] One of
our most eminent antiquaries has often assured me that his great passion,
and I may say his genius, for his curious knowledge and his vast
researches, he attributes to maternal affection. When his early taste for
these studies was thwarted by the very different one of his father, the
mother silently supplied her son with the sort of treasures he languished
for, blessing the knowledge,