much insisted upon.

Consistency of principle is brought to the test in every daily, hourly
occurrence of woman's life, and if she have been brought up without an
abiding sense of duty and responsibility, she is of all beings most
unfortunate; influences the most potent are committed to her care, and
from her they issue like the simoom of the desert, breathing moral
blight and death. I have endeavoured, in some degree, to enforce the
power of indirect influences on the minds of _children_: they are very
powerful in the other relations of life; in the conjugal, the truth is
too well known and attested by tale and song to need additional
corroboration here--and this book is principally, though not wholly,
dedicated to woman in her maternal character.

The extreme importance of the manifestation of consistency in mothers
may be argued from this fact, that it is of infinite importance to
children to see the daily operation of an immutable and consistent rule
of right, in matters sufficiently small to come within the sphere of
childish observation, and, therefore, if called upon to give a
definition of the peculiar mission of woman, and the peculiar source of
her influence, I should say it is the application of large principles to
small duties,--the agency of comprehensive intelligence on details. That
largeness of mental vision, which, while it can comprehend the vast, is
too keen to overlook the little, is especially to be cultivated by
women. It is a great mistake to suppose the two qualities are
incompatible; and the supposition that they are so, has done much
mischief; the error arises not from the extent, but from the narrowness
of our capacity, _To aspire_ is our privilege, and a privilege which we
are by no means slack to use, without considering that the operations of
infinitude are even more incomprehensible in their minuteness than in
their magnitude, and that, therefore, to be always looking from the
minute towards the vast, is only a proof of the finite nature of our
present capacity. The loftiest intellect may, without abasement, be
employed on the minutest domestic detail, and in all probability will
perform it better than an inferior one: it is the motive and end of an
action which makes it either dignified or mean. In the homely words of
old Herbert

All may of thee partake:
Nothing can be so mean,
Which, with this tincture, _for thy sake_
Will not grow bright and clean.

It is the