Chapter V: The Romance of Axel 305 (6)

It is impossible to conceive of any other education of so powerful a character or of so spiritual and ennobling a tendency as the education of the Jewish child in the history of the dealings of Jehovah with his forefathers. His national history revealed the direct relation of man to God.

God is a teacher. He reveals his will to men. The consciousness of being God’s people educated those colossal individualities the patriarchs, the great national leaders, and the prophets. Their biographies furnish types of character that have a pedagogical value for all time.

With his idea of God as a father, the Jew becomes the most humane of all peoples. His respect for bodily life, his humanity toward widows and orphans, his institution of the Jubilee year, the scape-goat, the laws against cruelty to animals, have been a great lesson to modern civilization.

The Psalms of David that celebrate God’s greatness, goodness, providence, patient kindness and forgiveness, present for all time the expression of what is most comforting and most purifying to the human soul.

The Egyptian and Phœnician spirit is limited by nature. The Jewish is elevated above it. He conceives God as pure causality;—the creator of the world;—the sun and stars are not his special revelation and in no respect to be reverenced by man.

Man is greater than nature because he is chosen by the Almighty as his friend, and unconscious nature is not worthy such a destiny. Righteousness is honor of God, and mere ceremony is not. Mere nature is not adequate to the revelation of the divine. It is not the hurricane nor the earthquake that reveals God, but the small voice that speaks to man’s spirit and reason. The human heart is the place for God, but the sun and moon are not his incarnations.

Finally the Jew conceives of the unity of humanity in one people, who shall all worship the One Personal God. Nationality, talent, caste, work, accidents of any sort are all indifferent compared with knowledge of the true God and subjection to his will. The God of the Jewish people is not a special, national God over against the gods of other nations. He is the One only God and all others are false gods, mere wood and stone, mere things. Thus for the Jew there is the doctrine that all people descend from Adam created by Jehovah. The Prince of Peace shall come to heal the nations, and his character shall be holiness—not physical strength, or beauty, or great size, or dignity of bearing, but holiness and humility and patience. He shall take upon himself infirmities and disgrace in order to redeem the world. He will be the Messiah.

Here is the greatest educational idea ever conceived in this world!

SONG.

By SIR JOHN DENHAM.

Morpheus, the humble god that dwells
In cottages and smoky cells,
Hates gilded roofs, and beds of down,
And though he fears no prince’s frown,
Flies from the circle of a crown.

Come, I say, thou powerful god,
And thy leaden charming-rod,
Dipt in the Lethean lake,
O’er his wakeful temples shake,
Lest he should sleep and never wake.

Nature, alas! why art thou so
Obligèd to thy greatest foe?
Sleep that is thy great repast,
Yet of death it bears a taste,
And both are the same thing at last.

TALES FROM SHAKSPERE.

By CHARLES LAMB.

MACBETH.

When Duncan the Meek reigned King of Scotland, there lived a great thane, or lord, called Macbeth. This Macbeth was a near kinsman to the king, and in great esteem at court for his valor and conduct in the wars; an example of which he had lately given, in defeating a rebel army, assisted by the troops of Norway, in terrible numbers.

The two Scottish generals, Macbeth and Banquo, returning victorious from this great battle, their way lay over a blasted heath, where they were stopped by the strange appearance of three figures, like women, except that they had beards, and their withered skins and wild attire made them look not like any earthly creatures. Macbeth first addressed them, when they, seemingly offended, laid each one her choppy finger upon her skinny lips, in token of silence: and the first of them saluted Macbeth with the title of “Thane of Glamis.” The general was not a little startled to find himself known by such creatures, but how much more, when the second of them followed up that salute by giving him the title of “Thane of Cawdor,” to which honor he had no pretensions! and again the third bid him, “All hail! _king that shalt be hereafter!_” Such prophetic greeting might well amaze him, who knew that while the king’s sons lived he could not hope to succeed to the throne. Then turning to Banquo, they pronounced him, in a sort of riddling terms, to be _lesser than Macbeth and greater! not so happy, but much happier!_ and prophesied that though he should never reign, yet his sons after him should be kings in Scotland. They then turned into air, and vanished: by which the generals knew them to be the weird sisters, or witches.

While they stood pondering upon the strangeness of this adventure, there arrived certain messengers from the king, who were empowered by him to confer upon Macbeth the dignity of Thane of Cawdor. An event so miraculously corresponding with the prediction of the witches astonished Macbeth, and he stood rapt in amazement, unable to make reply to the messengers; and in that point of time swelling hopes arose in his mind, that the prediction of the third witch might in like manner have its accomplishment, and that he should one day reign in Scotland. Turning to Banquo, he said, “Do you not hope that your children shall be kings, when what the witches promised to me has so wonderfully come to pass?” “That hope,” answered the general, “might enkindle you to aim at the throne: but oftentimes these ministers of darkness tell us truths in little things, to betray us into deeds of greatest consequence.” But the wicked suggestions of the witches had sunk too deep into the mind of Macbeth, to allow him to attend to the warnings of the good Banquo. From that time he bent all his thoughts how to compass the crown of Scotland.

Macbeth had a wife, to whom he communicated the strange prediction of the weird sisters, and its partial accomplishment. She was a bad, ambitious woman, and so as her husband and herself could arrive at greatness, she cared not much by what means. She spurred on the reluctant purposes of Macbeth, who felt compunction at the thoughts of blood, and did not cease to represent the murder of the king as a step absolutely necessary to the fulfilment of the flattering prophecy.

It happened at this time that the king, who, out of his royal condescension, would oftentimes visit his principal nobility on gracious terms, came to Macbeth’s house, attended by his two sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, and a numerous train of thanes and attendants, the more to honor Macbeth for the triumphal success of his wars. The castle of Macbeth was pleasantly situated, and the air about it was sweet and wholesome, which appeared by the nests which the martlet, or swallow, had built under all the jutting friezes and buttresses of the building, wherever it found a place of advantage: for where those birds most breed and haunt, the air is observed to be delicate. The king entered, well pleased with the place, and not less so with the attentions and respect of his honored hostess, lady Macbeth, who had the art of covering treacherous purposes with smiles; and could look like the innocent flower, while she was indeed the serpent under it. The king, being tired with his journey, went early to bed, and in his state-room two grooms of his chamber (as was the custom) slept beside him. He had been unusually pleased with his reception, and had made presents, before he retired, to his principal officers; and among the rest, had sent a rich diamond to Lady Macbeth, greeting her by the name of his most kind hostess.

Now was the middle of the night, when over half the world nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse men’s minds asleep, and none but the wolf and the murderer is abroad. This was the time when Lady Macbeth waked to plot the murder of the king. She would not have undertaken a deed so abhorrent to her sex, but that she feared her husband’s nature, that it was too full of the milk of human kindness, to do a contrived murder. She knew him to be ambitious, but withal to be scrupulous, and not yet prepared for that height of crime which commonly in the end accompanies inordinate ambition. She had won him to consent to the murder, but she doubted his resolution: and she feared that the natural tenderness of his disposition (more humane than her own) would come between and defeat the purpose. So with her own hands armed with a dagger, she approached the king’s bed; having taken care to ply the grooms of his chamber so with wine, that they slept intoxicated, and careless of their charge. There lay Duncan, in a sound sleep after the fatigues of his journey, and as she viewed him earnestly, there was something in his face, as he slept, which resembled her own father; and she had not the courage to proceed.

She returned to confer with her husband. His resolution had begun to stagger. He considered that there were strong reasons against the deed. In the first place, he was not only a subject, but a near kinsman to the king; and he had been his host and entertainer that day, whose duty by the laws of hospitality it was to shut the door against his murderers, not bear the knife himself. Then he considered how just and merciful a king this Duncan had been, how clear of offense to his subjects, how loving to his nobility, and in particular to him; that such kings are the peculiar care of Heaven, and their subjects doubly bound to revenge their deaths. Besides, by the favors of the king, Macbeth stood high in the opinion of all sorts of men, and how would those honors be stained by the reputation of so foul a murder!

In these conflicts of the mind Lady Macbeth found her husband, inclining to the better part, and resolving to proceed no further. But she being a woman not easily shaken from her evil purpose, began to pour in at his ears words which infused a portion of her own spirit into his mind, assigning reason upon reason why he should not shrink from what he had undertaken; how easy the deed was; how soon it would be over; and how the action of one short night would give to all their nights and days to come sovereign sway and royalty! Then she threw contempt on his change of purpose, and accused him of fickleness and cowardice; and declared that she had given suck, and knew how tender it was to love the babe that milked her, but she would while it was smiling in her face, have plucked it from her breast, and dashed its brains out, if she had so sworn to do it, as he had sworn to perform that murder. Then she added, how practicable it was to lay the guilt of the deed upon the drunken, sleepy grooms. And with the valor of her tongue she so chastised his sluggish resolutions, that he once more summoned up courage to the bloody business.

So, taking the dagger in his hand, he softly stole in the dark to the room where Duncan lay; and as he went, he thought he saw another dagger in the air, with the handle toward him, and on the blade and at the point of it drops of blood. But when he tried to grasp at it, it was nothing but air, a mere phantasm proceeding from his own hot and oppressed brain and the business he had in hand. Getting rid of this fear, he entered the king’s room, whom he despatched with one stroke of his dagger. Just as he had done the murder, one of the grooms who slept in the chamber, laughed in his sleep, and the other cried, “Murder,” which woke them both: but they said a short prayer; one of them said, “God bless us!” and the other answered, “Amen,” and addressed themselves to sleep again. Macbeth, who stood listening to them, tried to say “Amen” when the fellow said “God bless us!” but, though he had most need of a blessing, the word stuck in his throat, and he could not pronounce it. Again he thought he heard a voice which cried, “Sleep no more: Macbeth doth murder sleep, the innocent sleep, that nourishes life.” Still it cried, “Sleep no more,” to all the house. “Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.”

With such horrible imaginations, Macbeth returned to his listening wife, who began to think he had failed of his purpose, and that the deed was somehow frustrated. He came in so distracted a state, that she reproached him with his want of firmness, and sent him to wash his hands of the blood which stained them, while she took his dagger, with purpose to stain the cheeks of the grooms with blood, to make it seem their guilt.

Morning came, and with it the discovery of the murder, which could not be concealed; and though Macbeth and his lady made great show of grief, and the proofs against the grooms (the dagger being produced against them and their faces smeared with blood) were sufficiently strong, yet the entire suspicion fell upon Macbeth, whose inducements to such a deed were so much more forcible than poor silly grooms could be supposed to have, and Duncan’s two sons fled. Malcolm, the eldest, sought for refuge in the English court; and the youngest, Donalbain, made his escape to Ireland.

The king’s sons, who should have succeeded him, having thus vacated the throne, Macbeth as next heir was crowned king, and thus the prediction of the weird sisters was literally accomplished.

Though placed so high, Macbeth and his queen could not forget the prophecy of the weird sisters, that, though Macbeth should be king, yet not his children, but the children of Banquo, should be kings after him. The thought of this, and that they had defiled their hands with blood, and done so great crimes, only to place the posterity of Banquo upon the throne, so rankled within them, that they determined to put to death both Banquo and his son, to make void the predictions of the weird sisters, which in their own case had been so remarkably brought to pass. For this purpose they made a great supper, to which they invited all the chief thanes; and among the rest, with marks of particular respect, Banquo and his son Fleance were invited. The way by which Banquo was to pass to the palace at night, was beset by murderers appointed by Macbeth, who stabbed Banquo; but in the scuffle Fleance escaped. From that Fleance descended a race of monarchs who afterwards filled the Scottish throne, ending with James the Sixth of Scotland and the First of England, under whom the two crowns of England and Scotland were united.

At supper the queen, whose manners were in the highest degree affable and royal, played the hostess with a gracefulness and attention which conciliated every one present, and Macbeth discoursed freely with his thanes and nobles, saying, that all that was honorable in the country was under his roof, if he had but his good friend Banquo present, whom yet he hoped he should rather have to chide for neglect, than to lament for any mischance. Just at these words the ghost of Banquo, whom he had caused to be murdered, entered the room, and placed himself on the chair which Macbeth was about to occupy. Though Macbeth was a bold man, at this horrible sight his cheeks turned white with fear and he stood quite unmanned with his eyes fixed upon the ghost. His queen and all the nobles, who saw nothing, but perceived him gazing (as they thought) upon an empty chair, took it for a fit of distraction; and she reproached him, whispering that it was but the same fancy which had made him see the dagger in the air when he was about to kill Duncan. But Macbeth continued to see the ghost, and gave no heed to all they could say, while he addressed it with distracted words, yet so significant, that his queen fearing the dreadful secret would be disclosed, in great haste dismissed the guests, excusing the infirmity of Macbeth as a disorder he was often troubled with.

To such dreadful fancies Macbeth was subject. His queen and he had their sleeps afflicted with terrible dreams, and the blood of Banquo troubled them not more than the escape of Fleance, whom they now looked upon as father to a line of kings, who should keep their posterity out of the throne. With these miserable thoughts they found no peace, and Macbeth determined once more to seek out the weird sisters, and know from them the worst.

He sought them in a cave upon the heath, where they, who knew by foresight of his coming, were engaged in preparing their dreadful charms, by which they conjured up infernal spirits to reveal to them futurity. Their horrid ingredients were toads, bats, and serpents, the eye of a newt, and tongue of a dog, the leg of a lizard, and the wing of the night-owl, the scale of a dragon, the tooth of a wolf, the maw of the ravenous salt-sea shark, the mummy of a witch, the root of the poisonous hemlock (this to have effect must be digged in the dark), the gall of a goat, and the liver of a Jew, with slips of the yew tree that roots itself in graves, and the finger of a dead child: all these were set on to boil in a great kettle, or cauldron, which, as fast as it grew too hot, was cooled with a baboon’s blood: to these they poured in the blood of a sow that had eaten her young, and they threw into the flame the grease that had sweaten from a murderer’s gibbet. By these charms they bound the infernal spirits to answer their questions.

It was demanded of Macbeth, whether he would have his doubts resolved by them, or by their masters, the spirits. He, nothing daunted by their dreadful ceremonies which he saw, boldly answered, “Where are they? let me see them.” And they called the spirits, which were three. And the first arose in the likeness of an armed head, and he called Macbeth by name, and bid him beware of the thane of Fife; for which caution Macbeth thanked him: for Macbeth had entertained a jealousy of Macduff, the thane of Fife. And the second spirit arose in the likeness of a bloody child, and he called Macbeth by name, and bid him have no fear, but laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born should have power to hurt him: and he advised him to be bloody, bold, and resolute. “Then live, Macduff!” cried the king; “what need I fear of thee? but yet I will make assurance doubly sure. Thou shalt not live; that I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies, and sleep in spite of thunder.” That spirit being dismissed, a third arose in the form of a child crowned, with a tree in his hand. He called Macbeth by name, and comforted him against conspiracies, saying, that he should never be vanquished, until the wood of Birnam to Dunsinane-Hill should come against him. “Sweet bodements! good?” cried Macbeth; “who can unfix the forest, and move it from its earth-bound roots? I see I shall live the usual period of man’s life, and not be cut off by a violent death. But my heart throbs to know one thing. Tell me, if your art can tell so much, if Banquo’s issue shall ever reign in this kingdom?” Here the cauldron sunk into the ground, and a noise of music was heard, and eight shadows, like kings, passed by Macbeth, and Banquo last, who bore a glass which showed the figures of many more, and Banquo, all bloody, smiled upon Macbeth, and pointed to them; by which Macbeth knew that these were the posterity of Banquo, who should reign after him in Scotland; and the witches, with a sound of soft music, and with dancing, making a show of duty and welcome to Macbeth, vanished. And from this time the thoughts of Macbeth were all bloody, and dreadful.

The first thing he heard when he got out of the witches’ cave, was, that Macduff, thane of Fife, had fled to England, to join the army which was forming against him under Malcolm, the eldest son of the late king, with intent to displace Macbeth, and set Malcolm, the right heir, upon the throne. Macbeth, stung with rage, set upon the castle of Macduff, and put his wife and children, whom the thane had left behind, to the sword, and extended the slaughter to all who claimed the least relationship to Macduff.

These and such-like deeds alienated the minds of all his chief nobility from him. Such as could, fled to join with Malcolm and Macduff, who were now approaching with a powerful army which they had raised in England; and the rest secretly wished success to their arms, though for fear of Macbeth they could take no active part. His recruits went on slowly. Everybody hated the tyrant, nobody loved or honored him, but all suspected him, and he began to envy the condition of Duncan, whom he had murdered, who slept soundly in his grave, against whom treason had done its worst: neither steel nor poison, domestic malice nor foreign levies, could hurt him any longer.

While these things were acting, the queen who had been the sole partner in his wickedness, in whose bosom he could sometimes seek a momentary repose from those terrible dreams which afflicted them both nightly, died, it is supposed by her own hands, unable to bear the remorse of guilt and public hate; by which event he was left alone, without a soul to love or care for him, or a friend to whom he could confide his wicked purposes.

He grew careless of life, and wished for death; but the near approach of Malcolm’s army roused in him what remained of his ancient courage, and he determined to die (as he expressed it) “with armor on his back.” Besides this, the hollow promises of the witches had filled him with false confidence, and he remembered the sayings of the spirits, that none of woman born was to hurt him, and that he was never to be vanquished till Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane, which he thought could never be. So he shut himself up in his castle, whose impregnable strength was such as defied a siege: here he sullenly awaited the approach of Malcolm. When, upon a day, there came a messenger to him, pale and shaking with fear, almost unable to report that which he had seen: for he averred, that as he stood upon his watch on the hill, he looked towards Birnam, and to his thinking the wood began to move! “Liar and slave,” cried Macbeth; “if thou speakest false, thou shalt hang alive upon the next tree, till famine end thee. If thy tale be true, I care not if thou dost as much by me;” for Macbeth now began to faint in resolution, and to doubt the equivocal speeches of the spirits. He was not to fear till Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane: and now a wood did move! “However,” said he, “if this which he avouches be true, let us arm and out. There is no flying hence, nor staying here. I begin to be weary of the sun, and wish my life at an end.” With these desperate speeches he sallied forth upon the besiegers, who had now come up to the castle.

The strange appearance, which had given the messenger an idea of a wood moving, is easily solved. When the besieging army marched through the wood of Birnam, Malcolm, like a skillful general, instructed his soldiers to hew down every one a bough and bear it before him, by way of concealing the true numbers of his host. This marching of the soldiers with boughs had at a distance the appearance which had frightened the messenger. Thus were the words of the spirit brought to pass, in a sense different from that in which Macbeth had understood them, and one great hold of his confidence was gone.

And now a severe skirmishing took place, in which Macbeth, though feebly supported by those who called themselves his friends, but in reality hated the tyrant and inclined to the party of Malcolm and Macduff, yet fought with the extreme of rage and valor, cutting to pieces all who were opposed to him, till he came to where Macduff was fighting. Seeing Macduff, and remembering the caution of the spirit who had counseled him to avoid Macduff above all men, he would have turned, but Macduff, who had been seeking him through the whole fight, opposed his turning, and a fierce contest ensued; Macduff giving him many foul reproaches for the murder of his wife and children. Macbeth, whose soul was charged enough with blood of that family already, would still have declined the combat; but Macduff still urged him to it, calling him tyrant, murderer, hell-hound, and villain.

Then Macbeth remembered the words of the spirit, how none of woman born should hurt him; and smiling confidently he said to Macduff: “Thou losest thy labor, Macduff. As easily thou mayest impress the air with thy sword as make me vulnerable. I bear a charmed life, which must not yield to one of woman born.” “Despair thy charm,” said Macduff, “and let that lying spirit whom thou hast served, tell thee, that Macduff was never born of woman, never as the ordinary manner of men is to be born, but was untimely taken from his mother.” “Accursed be the tongue which tells me so,” said the trembling Macbeth, who felt his last hold of confidence give way; “and let never man in future believe the lying equivocations of witches and juggling spirits, who deceive us in words which have double senses, and while they keep their promise literally, disappoint our hopes with a different meaning. I will not fight with thee.”

“Then live!” said the scornful Macduff; “we will have a show of thee, as men show monsters, and a painted board, on which shall be written, ‘Here men may see the tyrant!’” “Never,” said Macbeth, whose courage returned with despair; “I will not live to kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet, and to be baited with the curses of the rabble. Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane, and thou opposed to me who wast never born of woman, yet I will try the last.” With these frantic words he threw himself upon Macduff, who after a severe struggle in the end overcame him, and cutting off his head, made a present of it to the young and lawful king, Malcolm; who took upon him the government which by the machinations of the usurper he had so long been deprived of, and ascended the throne of Duncan the Meek, amid the acclamation of the nobles and the people.

* * * * *

The imagination magnifies small objects, so as to fill the mind with a fantastic estimate; and with haughty insolence contracts the great to its own dwarfish measure, as for instance, in speaking of God.—_Pascal._

BEFORE DAYBREAK, WITH THE GREAT COMET OF 1882.

By CHARLOTTE E. LEAVITT.

The clock strikes four;
Glitter the stars, the waning moon hangs low,
The breath of night is chill, as soft I go
From out the door.

In all the air
The living silence of the morning broods,
So deep, so still, that every sound intrudes
Discordant there.

A nameless change
Makes unfamiliar all the well-known street,
And mocking echoes ’neath my stealthy feet,
Wake weird and strange.

On either hand,
Mysterious, with Argus eyes shut fast,
Dumb and unchanging as a hopeless past,
The houses stand.

Athwart the sky
Blazes the comet with its streaming hair,
Fleeing through space in passionate despair,
As doom were nigh;

While grand and grim,
Warlike Orion from his gleaming height
Dares this intruder, in its awful might,
To cope with him.

Intent I gaze:
And, half unheeded, swells through heart and brain
A solemn wonder that is almost pain—
A song of praise.

Lo! far away,
The first faint flashes of the coming morn
Herald triumphantly a king new-born,
A golden day.

* * * * *

DR. THOMAS SHERIDAN, who lost all chance of further preferment by choosing an unlucky text on the anniversary of George I, was an excellent scholar, but an indolent, good-natured, careless man. He was slovenly, indigent, and cheerful; ill-starred, improvident, but not unhappy. He was a fiddler, punster, quibbler, and wit; not a day passed without a rebus, a madrigal, or an anagram, and his pen and fiddlestick were in continual motion. Of the state of his house, at Quilca, his intimate friend and choice companion has left us the following lively picture:

QUILCA.

“Let me thy properties explain:
A rotten cabin dropping rain;
Chimneys with scorn rejecting smoke;
Stools, tables, chairs, and bedsteads broke.
Here elements have lost their uses;
Air ripens not, nor earth produces;
In vain we make poor Shela toil,
Fire will not roast, nor water boil;
Through all the valleys, hills, and plains,
The goddess Want in triumph reigns,
And her chief officers of state—
Sloth, Dirt, and Theft—around her wait.”

SOCIAL DUTIES IN THE FAMILY.

By FRANCES POWER COBBE.

This eminent lady is the daughter of the Archbishop of Dublin, and one of the most distinguished philanthropists in England. In the following pages will be found some timely thoughts she has uttered in a lecture on

SOCIAL DUTIES IN THE FAMILY.

A mother’s love ought to be attuned to the very note of the love divine,—to be, in fact, its echo from the deep cave of her heart.

But, with super-earthly love to light her way what does she see before her? There is, first, the duty of conducing to her child’s moral welfare, the highest of all her duties; secondly, of securing his bodily health; thirdly, of giving him that intellectual training which will enlarge his being and make his moral nature itself more robust and capable of fulfilling his duties in life; and lastly, of making him as happy as she may. These are each and all most complicated problems to many a good mother, working perhaps against wind and tide, with feeble health or limited means, or possibly with a husband who thwarts and opposes her endeavors. It would require not half a lecture, but a whole treatise, to deal with such a subject fitly, even if I possessed the experience or insight needful for the task. There is only one point on which I think ethical science may be of some utility. That point is the problem of _obedience_. How far ought it to be enforced?

Three things are commonly confounded in speaking of filial obedience—

First—The obedience which must be exacted from a child for its own physical, intellectual, and moral welfare.

Second—The obedience which the parent may exact for his (the parent’s) welfare or convenience.

Third—The obedience which parent and child alike owe to the moral law, and which it is the parent’s duty to teach the child to pay.

If mothers would but keep these three kinds of obedience clear and distinct in their minds, I think much of the supposed difficulty of the problem would disappear. And, if children as they grow up would likewise discriminate between them, many of their troubles would be relieved.

For the first, the excellent old Dr. Thomas Brown lays down (Lectures on Ethics, p. 287) a principle which seems to me exactly to fit the case. He says that parents “should impose no restraint which has not for its object some good greater than the temporary evil of the restraint itself.” For an infant, the restraint is no evil; and at that age everything must be a matter of obedience, the babe possessing no sense or experience for self-guidance. But, as childhood advances, so should freedom advance; and, even if the little boy or girl does now and then learn by sharp experience, the lesson will generally be well worth the cost: whereas the evils of over-restraint have no compensation. Each one is bad in itself, checking the proper development of character, chilling the spirits, and also in a cumulative way becoming increasingly mischievous, as the miserable sense of being fettered becomes confirmed.

In all this matter of the child’s own welfare, the mother’s aim ought to be to become the life-long counselor of her child; and a counselor is (by the very hypothesis) one who does not persist in claiming authority. Nobody thinks of _consulting_ another who may conclude their “advice” by saying, “And now I _order_ you to do as I have advised.” To drop, as completely and as early as possible, the tone of command, and assume that of the loving, sympathetic, ever disinterested guide and friend,—that is, I think, the true wisdom of every mother, as it was that of my own. Of course, there are cases so grave (especially where girls who little understand the need of caution are concerned) that it is absolutely necessary, nay, the mother’s pressing duty, to prohibit her daughter from running into danger. To apply Brown’s rule, the evil of the restraint is more than counter-balanced by immunity from deadly peril. Perhaps it is one of the principal causes of the dissatisfaction of young girls with parental control that they do not and can not understand what horrible dangers may overtake them in the still foul condition of society.

Second—It is too little remembered that a parent has a moral right to exact obedience as a form of _service_ from his child. The parent has, in strictest ethical sense, the first of all claims on the child’s _special benevolence_; _i. e._, on his _will to do good_. The double ties of gratitude and of closest human relationship make it the duty of the child to pay that sacred debt from first to last; and it is entirely fit and greatly for its benefit that the parent should claim that duty. The parent’s _direction_ in such cases, properly translated, is not a _command_, to which the response is blind obedience, but an indication of the way in which the person to whom the debt is due desires that it should be paid. There ought to be nothing in the slightest degree harsh or dictatorial in such direction. On the contrary, I can not but think that the introduction by parents of much greater courtesy to their children would be an immense advantage in this and other cases. We all ask our servants politely to do for us the services which they have contracted to do, and for which we pay them. How much more kindly and courteously ought we to ask of our children to perform services due by the blessed and holy debt of nature and gratitude, and which ought, each one, to be a joy to the child as well as to the parent! When it is rightly demanded and cheerfully paid, how excellent and beautiful to both is this kind of filial duty! When, for example, we see little girls of the working classes taught to carry their father’s dinner to the field as soon as they can toddle, and helping their mother to “mind the baby,” even if it be a “little Moloch” of a baby, we witness both the fulfillment of a legitimate claim on the part of the parents, and a most beneficent moral training for the child. I think this sort of service of the child is sadly lacking among the richer classes, and that it would be an excellent thing if mothers, however wealthy, found means of making their children more useful to themselves. Nothing can be worse for a child than to find everything done for her, and never to be called upon to do anything for anybody else. Indeed, any fine-natured child, like a dog, will find much more real pleasure in being of use, or fancying it is so, than in being perpetually pampered and amused. Of course there would be moral limits to such claims on the parent’s part, as, _e. g._, when they would interfere with the child’s health or education. But there is no natural termination in point of age to the parent’s right to give such directions for his own service. On the contrary, the time when the adult son or daughter has come into the full possession of his or her faculties, while the parent is sinking into the infirmities of age, is the very time when filial duty is most imperative in its obligation; and the fact that aged parents rarely attempt to give to adult sons and daughters the same directions for their comfort as they gave them when children shows how little the real nature of these sacred rights and duties is commonly understood.

Third—There is the _obedience_ which both parent and child owe to the eternal moral law; and this obedience again ought to be kept perfectly distinct from that which is exacted either for the child’s personal welfare or the parent’s convenience. The old and most important distinction between a thing which is _malum in se_ and a thing which is only _malum prohibitum_ ought never to be lost sight of. Even in a very little child, I think, a moral fault, such as a lie, or cruelty to an animal, or vindictiveness toward its companions, ought to be treated with gravity and sadness; and, as the child grows, an importance ought to be attached to such faults wholly incommensurate with any other sort of error, such as indolence about lessons or the like. The one aim of the parent must be to make profound impression of the awfulness and solemnity of moral good and moral evil.

But even here the difficulty haunts us, when is this enforcement of obedience to moral laws to cease? So long as a child is absolutely compelled to do right by sheer force and terror of punishment, its moral freedom can have no scope, and its moral life consequently can not even begin. It can not acquire the _virtue_ which results from free choice. All that the parent can do (and it is an indispensable preparation for virtue, though not virtue itself) is first to teach the child what is right,—to draw out its latent moral sense, and inspire it with the wish to do right,—and then to help its steps in the path which has been pointed out. Once a child grasps the idea of duty, and begins in its little way to try to “be good,” and displays the indescribably touching phenomena of childlike penitence and restoration, it becomes surely the most sacred task for the mother to aid such efforts—silently, indeed, for the most part, and too reverentially to talk much about it—with tenderest sympathy. It would be no kindness, of course, but cruelty, to open up hastily ways of liberty before moral strength has been gained to walk in them. The “hedging up the way with thorns” is a divine precaution, which a mother may well imitate. But the principle must be, as in the case of directions in matters not moral, gradually and systematically to exchange directions and orders for counsels and exhortations.

And here, in closing these, perhaps, too tedious remarks on the moral training of children, I shall add a word which may possibly startle some who hear me,—Beware that, in earnestly seeking your child’s moral welfare, you do not _force_ the moral nature with hot-house culture. To be a sturdy plant, it must grow naturally, and not too rapidly. It seems as if it were not intended by Providence that this supreme part of our human nature should be developed far in childhood and early youth, lovely as are the blossoms it sometimes then bears,—too often to drop into an untimely grave, or wither away in the heat of manhood without fruit. Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, undoubtedly made a great mistake in this matter, as one of his very best disciples, Arthur Hugh Clough, was able in later years to see. Mothers should not be unhappy, if boys are honorable and kindly and affectionate, if they should, at fifteen, prefer a game of football to a visit of charity; and I should not blame at all severely any of my young friends, if such there be here present, who may be at this moment wishing that she were playing lawn-tennis, instead of sitting still to hear a dull dissertation on moral philosophy!

But, when all is done that can be done by human wisdom to help the moral growth of the young, there is a vast space left for the other and easier parental duty of _providing for their happiness_. Of course, to nine parents out of ten, high and low, it is the joy and delight of their lives to make their children as happy as possible. There is no virtue in this. Nature (or, let us say frankly, God) has so made us that in middle life nearly all direct pleasures to be enjoyed on our own account begin to pall. We are too busy or too indifferent to care much for a score of things which, when we were younger, we found quite entrancing.

“It is the one great grief of life to feel all feelings die.”

But, just as our sun goes down to the horizon, a moonlight reflection of pleasure, purer, calmer than the first, rises to give a sweet interest to the lives of all who are happy enough to have young creatures around them. The pleasures we can no longer taste for ourselves we taste in our children’s enjoyment. Their glee, their eagerness, their freshness of delight, stir our pulses with tenderness and sympathy. I do not know anything in the world which pulls one’s heartstrings so much as the sight of a little blue-eyed, golden-haired, white-frocked atom of humanity clapping its hands and crowing with ecstasy at the sight of a kite soaring up into the summer sky.

Are we to ask parents to deny themselves and their children in the stern old way, and turn their young lives into dreary rounds of duty and work, till they hate the very name of either one or the other? God forbid! Does God, the great Parent, Father and Mother of the World, lead us up to himself by any such harsh, stern tuition? Nay, but has he not made earth so beautiful, and planted flowers by every wayside, and gladdened our hearts by ten thousand delights of the intellect, the senses, the tastes, and the affections? Fear, my friends, to make your children _unhappy_, and to love them _too little_. But never fear to make them too happy or to love them too much! There is a great, deep saying, that we must all enter the kingdom of God as little children. Surely, the converse of it is true also; and we should prepare in our homes a kingdom of God,—of peace and love and tenderness and innocent pleasure,—whenever a little child is sent to us out of heaven to dwell in it.

We now come to speak of the duties of daughters. The ethical grounds of the duty of supreme benevolence toward our parents are clear. They are nearest to us of human beings. We owe them life and (nearly always also) endless cares and affection. In the case of a mother, her claims on her child—founded on the bodily agony she has borne on its behalf, and the ineffably sweet office of nursing (when she has performed it), her care in infancy, and love and sympathy in later years—make together such a cumulative title to gratitude and devotion that it is impossible to place on it any limitation.

This claim is, of course, happily usually admitted in the case of daughters _who do not marry_. It is understood that they are bound to do all they can for their mother’s and father’s comfort. But, may I ask, who absolved the daughters who marry from the same sacred obligation? In Catholic countries, young women often quit their aged parents, no matter how much they need them, to enter “religion,” as it is said; and we Protestants are very indignant with them for so doing. But, when it comes to our Protestant religion of matrimony, lo! we are extremely indulgent to the girl who deposits her filial obligations on what the _Morning Post_ calls the “Hymeneal Altar!” The daughter practically says to her blind father or bed-ridden mother: “Corban! I am going off to India with Captain Algernon, who waltzes beautifully, and whom I met last night at a ball. It is a gift by whatsoever you might have been profited by me.”

Is this right or justifiable? Public opinion condones it; and the parent often consents out of the abundance of unselfish affection, thereby in a certain formal way releasing the daughter from her natural debt. But I do not think, if the parent really wants her services, that she can morally withdraw them, even with such consent, and certainly not _without_ it.

We all see this remarkably clearly when the question is not of marriage, but of a girl of the higher class devoting herself to charity or art, or any kind of public work which requires her to quit her parents’ roof. Then, indeed, even if her parents be in the full vigor of life, and have half a dozen other daughters, we are pretty sure to hear the solemn condemnation of the adventurous damsel, “Angelina ought to attend to her father and mother, and not go here or there for this or that purpose.”

Surely there is a very obvious rule to cover all these cases. If either parent _wants_ the daughter she ought not to leave him or her, _either_ to marry or to go into a nunnery, or for any other purpose. If her parents do _not_ want her, then, being of age to judge for herself, she is free _either_ to undertake the duties of a wife, or _any others_ for which she may feel a vocation.

This may sound very hard. It is undoubtedly the demand for a very high degree of virtue, where the sacrifice may be that of the happiness of a lifetime. But every duty may sometimes claim such sacrifices. Parental duty does so perpetually. How many thousands of mothers and fathers toil all their days and give up health and every enjoyment for their children’s interests! Why should not filial duties likewise exact equal sacrifice? The entire devotion to the parent when the parent really needs it, and the constant devotion of as much care as the parent requires,—this, and nothing short of this, seems to me to be the standard of filial duty.

A very difficult question arises in the case of the abnormal and scarcely sane development of selfishness which we sometimes sadly witness in old age. I think, in such deplorable cases, the child is called on to remember that, even in her filial relation, the _moral welfare_ of the object of benevolence is before all other considerations, and that she is bound to pause in a course which obviously is tending to promote a great moral fault. Gently and with great care and deference, she ought to remind the parent of the needs of others.

The great difficulty in the lives of hundreds of daughters of the upper ranks just now lies in this: that they find themselves torn between two opposing impulses, and know not which they ought to follow. On one side are the habits of a child, and the assurance of everybody that the same habits of quiescence and submission ought to be maintained into womanhood. On the other hand there is the same instinct which we see in a baby’s limbs, to stir, to change its position, to climb, to run; to use, in short, the muscles and faculties it possesses. Every young bird flutters away from its nest, however soft; every little rabbit quits the comfortable hole in which it was born; and we take it as fit and right they should do so, even when there are hawks and weasels all around. Only when a young girl wants to do anything of the analogous kind, her instinct is treated as a sort of sin. She is asked, “Can not she be contented, having so nice a home and luxuries provided in abundance?” Keble’s fine but much-misused lines, about “room to deny ourselves” and the “common task” and “daily round” being all we ought to require, are sure to be quoted against her; and, in short, she feels herself a culprit, and probably at least once a week has a fit of penitence for her incorrigible “discontent.” I have known this kind of thing go on for years, and it is repeated in hundreds, in thousands, of families. I have known it where there were seven miserable, big, young women in one little house! It is supposed to be the most impossible thing in the world for a parent to give his son a stone for bread or a serpent for a fish. But scores of fathers, in the higher ranks, give their daughters diamonds when they crave for education, and twist round their necks the serpents of idle luxury and pleasure when they ask for wholesome employment.

Pardon me if I speak very warmly on this subject, because I think here lies one of the great evils of the condition of our sex and class at this time; and I feel intensely for the young spirits whose natural and whose _noble_ aspirations are so checked and deadened and quenched through all their youth and years of energy that, when the time for emancipation comes at last, it is too late for them to make use of it. They have been dwarfed and stunted, and can never either be or do anything greatly good.

In short, the complaint we women make against men, that they persist in treating us as minors when we have attained our majority, is what daughters too often can justly make against both their fathers and mothers. They keep them in the swaddling-clothes of childhood, when they ought to set free and train every limb to its most athletic and joyous exercise. Dangers, of course, on the other side there are,—of over-emancipated and ill-advised girls who sorely need more parental guidance than they obtain; but, so far as my experience goes, these cases are few compared to those of the young women (ladies, of course, I mean, for in the lower classes such evils are unknown) whose lives are spoiled by _over-restraint in innocent things_. They are left free, and encouraged to plunge into the maelstrom of a fashionable season’s senseless whirl of dissipation and luxury. They are restrained from every effort at self-development or rational self-sacrifice, till, for the very want of some corrective bitter, they go and beat the hassocks in a church as a pious exercise, or perhaps finally lock themselves up in a nunnery. Small blame to them! Ritualist nunneries at present offer the most easily accessible back-door out of fine drawing-rooms into anything like a field of usefulness.

Now for sisters. That brothers and sisters should give one another in an ordinary way the first-fruits of their benevolence follows obviously from the closeness of their propinquity. Usually there has also been from childhood the blessed interchange of kindnesses which accumulate on both sides into a claim of reciprocal gratitude.

Miss Bremer remarks that “it is the general characteristic of affection to make us blind to the faults of those we love, but from this weakness _fraternal_ love is wholly exempt.” Brothers are indeed terrible critics of their sisters, and, so far, irritating creatures. But otherwise, as we all know, they are the very joy and pride of our lives; and there is probably not one duty in our list which needs less to be insisted on to women generally than that of bestowing on their brothers not only love of benevolence, but also a large amount of love of complacency. It is usually also a truly sound moral sentiment, causing the sister to take profound interest in the religious and moral welfare of her brother, as well as in his health and happiness.