THE

UNNATURAL MOTHER.

"Even the Sea-monsters draw out the breast: they give suck to their young ones."

LAMENTATIONS, ch. iv. v. 3.

Of all the sorrows known to mankind how large a portion, and those sorrows, too, of the most acute, arises from a deficiency of affection in children towards their parents! We daily see fortunes, the fruit of the industry and care of ages, squandered in a single year. We see fathers and mothers reduced to beggary, or made wretched during the half of their lives by stubborn and profligate children; or,

at the least, their last hours embittered by alarming apprehensions as to the fate of those children. The immediate causes of this misery are usually visible enough; but, the distant cause, the root of the evil, is seldom so clear before us, and is generally hidden from the parents themselves even more closely than from the rest of the world.

The whole congregation of animated nature tell us with united voice, that it is the province of age to give instruction to youth, of the experienced to teach the inexperienced, and especially of the parent to train up the child. The Lioness after having suckled her whelp, then brings it nourishment suited to its more advanced age, and leads it forth by degrees in search of its prey. The Wren, having hatched her brood, first brings them their meals in her bill, then shows them how to peck, next how to take their flights, and, lastly, where to seek their food and how to provide for their security. Here the duties of these irrational parents cease, and, with them, perhaps, all recollection of the ties of consanguinity. Not so with man. Here the ties

continue, or ought to continue, in full force, and to be broken asunder only by the hand of death.

We all know and acknowledge, that it is of the greatest importance to both parties, that children should receive good advice and instruction from parents. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." PROV. Ch. xx. V. 6. Indeed, without the instruction of parents what are children? Little better than wild animals. But, to be able to instruct, you must find in the child a disposition to listen to instruction; and, to be aided by this disposition you must have the deep-rooted affection of the child; and, to be deep-rooted, it must have been implanted at an early age. The days of the rod soon pass away. Law, interest, force of one kind or another, may restrain for a season; but the power of these has its end; and then, if there be not filial affection, the foundation of which is deeply laid in the breast, the parent has no power. Even the brightest example loses half its force, if unsupported by this affection.