Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/70

 Yet warm-hearted parents will not forget that the ascending love is, as we have said, less than the descending. The wide world, with its novelties, and the boundless mysterious futurity, exert an unspent influence over the minds of young persons, and cannot but divert a little their affections from their parents, however fondly and sincerely they may be loved. Whereas, with those who have reached the middle stage of life, the glitter of the world has been seen through, and its promise has been brought to the proof, and has so far failed in the performance, that the mind has turned toward the circle of the domestic affections, as a solace. But no such disabusing of the imagination by experience, has had place with children; and parents must remember that, while their own hopes and affections are converging more and more upon a focus, those of their children are all radiating through infinite space.

It may not be so easy to bear, with equanimity, another sort of disappointment, to which fond parental love is sometimes exposed;—I mean that which happens when, from a want of discretion, or of energy, the affections of children are snatched from those who claim them by the rights of nature, and are fixed upon by-standers or strangers. Yet it is a law of the human mind—inevitable and uniform, that it attaches itself, especially in early life, to the wisest, and the finest, and the most consistently benign, of those who come daily within its circle. A mother, for instance, may possess many substantial good qualities, which should attach her children to herself; and yet she may, in comparison with a teacher, or a relative, or even a servant, under the same roof, want tact, or calmness, or self-control, or dignity; and so in fact be loved only in an inferior degree. Nor will children be able, even if they entertained the wish to do so, to disguise their regards, or to speak and look as if they loved her most whom they love least. For this grief there is but one remedy, or preventive—the en-