Page:The Mothers of England.djvu/21

16 mother devotes herself with unremitting assiduity to the cultivation of the bodily faculties of her infant, so that none of its organic functions may suffer from the want of exercise. If she discovers the slightest tendency to the contraction of a muscle, or the distortion of a limb, her whole being is absorbed by apprehensions of the most distressing kind, and all her energies are directed to the means of averting the evils she anticipates for the future. Is it thus, I would ask, on the first discovery of a tendency to impatience, to contradiction, or to revenge? It is but too probable that every positive exhibition of these wrong tendencies is followed by an act of punishment proportioned to the good or evil temper of the nurse, just upon the old-fashioned principle that naughty children must be whipped; but as to the philosophy of such punishment, as well might a crooked limb be forcibly set straight every time it was seen out of place, as the perverse child be simply punished every time it did wrong.

There is no woman blind enough to suppose that in the case of the body, mere momentary correction will be of any lasting use; and why then should the mind, or in other words, the moral character of the child, be treated with less reasoning, and less calculation than its animal frame?

It is possible, however, so far to extend our ideas into the future, as to lose sight of the intermediate space between the cradle and the grave. And where the mother is so deficient in knowledge of the world, and of human nature in general, as to be a stranger to that wide theatre of stirring interests which we call human life, it must of course be left lo circumstances to mould the characters of her children. The result of which, in all probability, will be, that the accidents of life to them will be so various and unexpected, as to surprise them into acting very differently from what their parents had intended.

We can not but suppose, however, that most women educated under ordinary circumstances, will have learned something of the world before being placed in the situation of mothers; and out of such knowledge arises a very natural and suitable inquiry, how the children under their care shall be best prepared for entering upon the world