OUR MOTHERS.

Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 206, 22 January 1866, Page 3

OUR MOTHERS.

Some one has said, that a young mother is the most beautiful thing in nature. Why qualifiy it ? Why young? Are not all mothers beautiful? The sentimental outside beholder may prefer youth in the pretty picture ; but lam inclined to think that sons and daughters, who are most, intimately concerned in the matter, love and admire their mothers most when they are old. How suggestive of something holy and venerable it is when a person talks of his " dear old mother." Away with your mincing " mamas," and "mam-mas" suggestive only of a fine lady, who deputes her duties to a nurse, a drawing room maternal parent, who is afraid to handle her offspring for fear of spoiling her fine new gown. Give me the homely mother, the arms of whose love are all embracing, who is beautiful always, whether arrayed in satin, or modestly habited in bombazine. Though I have lately glorified aunts somewhat at the expense of mothers, I am not insensible to the supreme claims which the latter have upon our love, our gratitude and our respect. There are more ways than one of looking at things : and there are many aspects of mothers which are entirely beautiful. Maternal love is a mystery which human reason can never fathom. It is altogether above reason ; it is a holy passion, in which all others are absorbed and lost. It is a sacred flame on the altar of the heart, which is never quenched. That it does not require reason to feed it and keep it alive is witnessed in the instinctive maternal love which pervades all animal nature. Every one must have instinctively felt the aptness of the scriptural illustration of niiterntil solicitude, which gathers her chickens under her wing. The hen's maternal care, so patient, so unselfish, i is a miniature replica of Nature's greatest work. No doubt, it is carried on and on ad infinitum, until we want a microscope to see it.' There are myriads of anxious mothers in a leaf, whose destiny is to live for a single da/ and then die for ever ; as there are millions of anxious mothers in the human family whose span of life is threescore years and ten, with a glorious eternity lying beyond. The mother is the mainspring of all nature, the fountain of all pure love — the first likeness on earth of God himself. Man did not deserve to have the first entry in the garden of Eden. Burns with his great sympathetic soul, seems to have felt this when he sang of Dame Nature, Her prentice han' She tried on man, And then she made the lasses, O .' It was the only way of explaining the matter while adhering to the Mosaic history. If I were a follower of Dr. Colenso, and ventured to interpret these things in my own way, I should say that if the writer of that history had been a womau, she would have brought Eve on the scene first and devoted a rib to Adam ; and if I were a .Frenchman, I should say, that it was not polite of Adam to take the pas of a lady. But I am neither, and I will say none of these things, for I am Orthodox, orthodox, Wha cam' in wi 5 John Knox, and I will not sound an alarm to my conscience with any " heretic blast," whether it come from the " west " or the south. I will not even say that What is nae sense maun be nonsense. The theory that we derive ourj; intellectual qualities from our mothers, while we are indebted to our lathers only for our physical attributes, is most agreeable to ail the natural instincts of man. It is so rational a theory that one wonders why those clever old fellows the " ancients " did not perceive it. It is upon this theory that we trace the genius of our great men to the infiuence of then" mothers. Tiie same theory, taken inversely, would also account for the fact that great men have very rarely have great sons. Genius is not hereditary through the fathers, but through the mothers. The popular perception of this law of nature finds expression in the common remark that a child is " the image of his father," and has the " amiable disposition of his mother," or perhaps vice versa, as to the disposition. It is not altogether because our mothers are of the g" gentler " sex that we fiy to them for sympathy instead of to our fathers. It is because there is a more intimate relationship between us, because the strings of our nature are more in unison ; because we are more nearly flesh of their ilesh, and blood of their blood. In the old patriarchal times the father was the principal person, the sole and undivided head ot the family. The mother was a secondary person altogether. One ctiiinot help feeling that the mothers of the Old Testament occupied a somewhat undignified position in the family. The state of affairs in patriarchal society is iully explained when we call to mind that the head of the iami y was generally a " sad Turk." It is a fact, which may not be generally known, that a remnant of the patriarchal system still lingers in the midst of the new dispensation which inculcates love and equality. And the country (of all countries in the world) where this autocratic paternal government is to be met with is Scotland. In the Catholic countries of Europe, the love and duty of children centre in the mother. In Spain, Italy, and Germany, and particularly in France, the mother is the guiding star of the family. The German mother is a sacred one ; the French mother is a 'poetical one. When a .Frenchman gets sentimental, he never fails to rave about his mother. When he goes into battle, he invokes the name of "ma mere." When he lies dying on the field, his last words are for "ma mere." When he escapes this fate, and returns to France, victorious, his first desire is to embrace "ma mere." When he gets tipsy — which, to his credit, is seldom — he maunders about "ma mere," Toujours, ma mere ! The German is not so high-flown on the subject, but possibly he is more earnest in his affection. When you meet him abroad in the world, he has always pleasant recollections of his " moder " to impart to you. How rarely you hear him talk about his "fader!" As you come north, however, among Celts, Saxons, and Scandinavians, the father rises in importance, and the mother sinks. I cannot believe that race is the sole cause of this difference in feeling ; for while in Scotland you find . the father pre-eminent in the affections of the children, in Ireland it is the mother who attracts the largest share of attachment. In England the mother is of less importance than in France, less even than in Ireland. This may be explained partly by the difference in religion, partly by the laws of succession and primogeniture, lv the Catholic religion, the material idea is quite as sacred as the paternal one, while it has the additional attributes of humanity imparted to it. The Virgin Mary, with the Saviour of the World at her breast, is the ever present symbol of maternal origin and maternal love. In Protestant England this is wanting to the great mass of the people ; and the aristocracy, who set the fashions even in social habits, inculcate the idea of inheritance from t!ie lather, naturally inviting duty, if not love, towards the male head of the family. In English aristocratic society it matters little — so far as name and property are concerned — who your mother is. She may be a washerwoman or a dancing girl. You, the eldest son, are as much a Duke and a Montmorency as if your motner had been a scion of the noblest house in the land. It is your fatr-er from whom you get all your glory and all your possessions. Such is the subordina- ! tion of the sons of the aristocratic classes to the I paterncl idea, that they will even take their politics from their fathers, against their own convictions. In a purely domestic way, however, the English mother occupies a most honorable position. She ! is loved, respected, and looked up to, and the usages of society, no less than the dictates of natural reverence, establish her claims to the most delicate and chivalrous consideration. In one department of the she is all suprtme. This is not quite the case in Scotland. The Scotch father is sternly patriarchal. The wife is in a great measure subordinate to him even in domestic matters. In England and Ire and, and indeed in most other Uliristain oountries, the i^^H^«^X#gWß W4 &9k fifff ft%

thnr mothers ; in Scotland they take them from their fathers. This is chiefly to be observ. d among the middle and lower classes. You will find many Scotch househol is in the rural districts where the father is a sort of potantate in his house. He has the best room, the best chair, t^e best knife and fork, the silver spoon. The tit-bits and the luxuries are reserved for him. His wife speaks of him with awe and reverence, and calls him " Mister," even to her own relations. When this majestic father expresses his views, his wife sits mum, never daring to put in a word. If he be given to religion, he will hays nis way in that ; if he be given to whisky-toddy, he will have his way in that also. He will decide the doctrine of predestination, and equally determine for himself how many tumblers are good for him after dinner. Education, I fancy, is at the bottom of this Scotch singularity. The men are better educated than the women. Intellectually they are not companions for each other. The result of thi • state of things is, that the chilJren " take to " the father rather than to the mother. You will rarely see a Scotch boy kissing, his mother; yet it is common to see him caressing his father. I believe that, if a Scotch father and mother were to come out from their home to seek fortune elsewhere, and one were to turn to the right and the other to -the left, the children would, in most follow the father. In Ireland and France, "i believe they would follow the mother. InEui> land, probably some would follow the father, and some the mother. But the influence in each ca*e would be different. Yet in all Christian countries the primary idea of a mother is one that instinctively associates itself with love and tenderness and sympathy. However important the father may make himself, there are matters which he cannot assist us in. We may consult him on the atfairs of Lfe and the world, but it is to the mother that we go for u,dviee, sympathy, and consolatioa in the affairs of the heart and the sensibilities. It is on her bosom that we pillow the weary head, into her ear that we pour the tale of our soul's woe, from her lips that we hear the sweet spoken words of comfort and consolation. And how little can we retnrn to her for all her patience with us, all her care, all her love for us. When we are young unfledged in the nest, we cling close to her, taking her warm breast and her protecting wings as our birthright — as yet unconscious of our debt of gratitude. And when our feathers grow, we fly away and leave her — fly away to build nests of our own. We pass from one care to another, never sharing it, but always the objects of it. When we consider what the life of a mother is from first to last, we should learn to be grateful, and strive -to show our gratitude. It seems almost a hard doctrine that a man should leave his mother and cleave to his wife. As a matter of social polity, it may be necessary that he should do so ; but in purity and sacredness, no love can exceed that which a man feels for his mother. No other love should be allowed to interfere with this. It is the love of heaven iraelf. When we reflect upon what mothers have to endure, we may allow that novelists are right in making the culminating point the marriage of their heroines. After that their trouble begins. Man, in his self-importance, has applied the proverb to himself; but it should be, " When a woman marries her trouble begins. 1 ' It is she who feels the needles and pins of life. Man it is, rather, who sharpens their points. Woman's is a subjective life from first to last. No man knows what a woman suffers in bearing, and bringing up a family of children. Only Heaven knows — Heaven, which has endowed her with that wondrous love which redeems her existence from being an intolerable slavery. And when the task is done, and the children have gone forth into the world, how hard it is to be lelt alone with a full heart — with love still warm and sympathy still uuexhausted. Ah me !ahme !my heart bleeds when I think of the widowed mother wafting her loving thoughts across the seas upon the wings of sighs, nursing us again in thought, fondling us once more in thj'anns of hsv imagination. This is the mother's fate often ; the lathers' seldom. The father, when he becomes a widower, is never too old to begin his life all over again. The mother in most cases, holds the old. love too sacred to pollute it with another. She is content to live upon the memories of the past — to wait patiently until Grod calls her to that land where the love of the mother is known, though there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage.