Page:The Mothers of England.djvu/98

Rh While seeking the happiness of children, however, we must not be so forgetful of their good, as to pay no regard to the kind of happiness which is to be the object of their desires. We must not forget that we are all in a state of progression, and that children especially are only commencing what time will mature. Why then should we seek for them a low kind of happiness, such as the indulgence of appetite, or the mere gratification of the senses in any other way; since no circumstances in after life, no development of character, and no cultivation of those senses, can render such happiness intense in proportion to our improved facilities for obtaining it. Thus a child who has imbibed the idea that eating and drinking constitute the highest enjoyment, stands in the unfortunate position of having nothing more to gain; because no cultivation of the sense of taste can enlarge to any considerable extent the pleasure it is calculated to afford.

It is not thus with the pleasures of the mind. Ever progressing, ever enlarging the sphere of its enjoyments, human nature is capable of advancing onward, until it attains an approximation to the Divine; and the higher the range of thought and feeling which it occupies, the purer is the enjoyment of which it participates.

In this intellectual progress, mothers have more to do than most women seem to be aware; because it is peculiarly their province to render the path of learning lovely and attractive, and thus to associate feelings of happiness with the acquisition of ideas, the prosecution of study, and the general improvement of the mental faculties. Mothers are apt to be startled at the idea of educating their children, as if education consisted in nothing but the routine of daily lessons, or as if the extreme of intellectual culture was dependant upon them. Happily, however, theirs is a labor of love, rather than of tasks, and it is simply by, and in, this love, that they are called upon to throw the whole weight of their influence, of their powers to charm, to amuse, and fix attention, into the scale of intellectual improvement; so that nothing shall be wanting on their part to render their children not only willing, but happy, to go on from step to step, until they learn to love intellectual pleasures for their own sake alone.