freedom, such spontaneity; but whose moral growth is stinted, dwarfed, and distorted, partly by injudicious treatment, and partly by the want of what has been significantly called "a wholesome letting alone." This does not imply the absence of care and culture; but that wise limitation of both, which will leave to the child the degree of self-assertion necessary to a true individuality, and to harmony of being. The soul of a child under constant close supervision, and the perpetual recurrence of criticism, admonition, and reproof, is well typified by the slave under the lash of a driver.

Use, I beseech you, beforehand, the care and caution of the florist. Find out what conditions of every sort are most favorable to such an organization in children as will best promote their moral, physical, and intellectual development; and having ascertained these, fulfil them, conscientiously, so far as it is in your power to do so. Read over a part of section 2d, in the 5th chapter of Combe's Constitution of Man, about thirty pages, beginning with the 150th. Read, also, a page or two bearing upon kindred subjects, in the 8th chapter of Combe's Physiology. I will introduce here one paragraph from it, as follows: "Doctor Caldwell, too, the able and philanthropic advocate of an improved system of physical, moral, and intellectual education in America, is very urgent in enforcing rational care, during the period of gestation,

on the part of every mother who values the future health and happiness of her progeny. Among other things, he insists on the necessity of mothers taking more exercise in the open air than they usually do; and cautions them against allowing a feeling of false delicacy to keep them confined to their rooms for weeks or months. For the same reason, the mind ought to be kept free from gloom or anxiety, and in that state of cheerful activity which results from the proper exercise of the moral and social feelings, and intellect. But if seclusion and depression be hurtful to the unborn progeny; thoughtless dissipation, late hours, dancing, waltzing, and rough exercise on horseback, irritability of temper, and peevishness of disposition, are not less injurious. Hence the Margravine of Anspach most justly remarks that, when a woman is likely to become a mother, she ought to be doubly careful of her temper, and, in particular, to indulge in no ideas that are not cheerful, and no sentiments that are not kind. Such is the connection between the mind and body, that the features of the face are moulded, commonly, into an expression of the internal disposition; and is it not natural to think that an infant, before it is born, may be affected by the temper of its mother.''

In preparations for the care of your child, and of yourself, after its birth, I advise you to make yourself familiar with Combe's work on Infancy,

edited by Bell, and with Parker's Hand-book for Mothers. Inform yourself, beforehand, of all the means necessary to secure your complete restoration to full vigor after your child's birth, and scrupulously fulfil every prescribed condition. Many a woman has made herself an invalid for life, by indiscretions and imprudences at this important period, committed in utter ignorance of the consequences to which they might lead.

In regard to your child, your first care must be to make him a fine animal, a process that should be conducted by rule, from the beginning. We do not need the starry heavens to proclaim what virtue there is in method and regularity; but the great law inscribed all over them, applies as well to every department, small and great, in this mundane sphere of ours. Let his food be given to him at regular times, as soon as there is the possibility of forming a habit in this respect; that is, after he fairly wakes into being. Do not allow your own convenience or pleasure to interfere with what is desirable for him in this respect. Do not go, or stay away, when your duty requires you to be with him; nor be tempted to stop a crying fit, on his part, by giving him his food out of season-a supposed remedy which probably serves but to aggravate the cause of his uneasiness. His sleep, also, should be made, as much as possible, to observe regular periods; and, although this habit is not so certainly under your

control as the others, much may be done by regular, systematic efforts to promote and establish it. When he becomes old enough to be sent out for air and exercise, the same regularity should be observed. In contriving and arranging his dress, have reference chiefly to his comfort, and the preservation of his health; and not to the gratification of your own vanity. Because a child's neck and arms are beautiful, shall they be left bare in our severe winters, at the risk, often, of life-always of injury to the health? Few pleasures, especially small pleasures, are procured at so great a cost.

In regard to other conditions of health, diet, exercise, etc., I will only exhort you to bestow as much care upon your children as is given to your horses, who receive only the food "convenient" for them, and this in proper quantity, and after fixed intervals; who are not allowed to eat anything out of time, nor immediately before or after active exercise; whose skins are kept in excellent order, for health as well as for beauty, and who are regularly exercised.

If I have said that the mother's first care must be to make her child a fine animal, it is because its higher being, its "inner man," can be properly developed and perfected only by means of a sound physical organization. Intellectual growth will proceed fast enough in a little child without direct cultivation, exactly in proportion as the immature

brain, the mind's instrument, acquires strength and

solidity.

But let us come back to the flower.

You have

one destined for God's garden of immortals, and from you, chiefly, must come the guardian care; from you the sun and dew necessary for its proper expansion and perfect bloom. Should there be stinting and blight instead, whose will be the fault?

God has placed in the mother's heart a deep well of tenderness. Is this alone sufficient for her needs? Far from it. She must have, besides, wisdom, patience, self-denial, forbearance, and a deep sense of responsibility.

Love is the first life of the soul, the first symptom of its intelligence, the first indication of its origin in God, its nature kindred with the divine nature. At a very early period, the new-born child becomes responsive to the tread of its mother's foot, to her voice, to her smile; and a sympathy is already established between them, by which she may act upon it, as life proceeds, for good or for evil, with an influence more powerful than that of any material agent. And, as it precedes all others, so it should be the leading, all-controlling influence on her part. But maternal love is an instinct which, acting alone, may, in the end, only harm the child. It, therefore, must be enlightened, made wise, and fortified by a strong sense of duty. "This is love,