certain consequences of each human action (and these consequences are invariable) will know the ways of Divine justice; and, like the prophets of antiquity, he will be able to reveal them to the world.

What a prodigious science is that which can say to man, If thou dost such a thing, such a thing will happen to thee; but the study is difficult, and full of accidents which deceive us. The reaction does not always take place in a direct manner. It sometimes strikes the performer of the action, sometimes those which surround him. Its justice appears to us slow and capricious. It overturns a throne, where we perceive only a tyrant to be punished; then come the exceptions which irritate us, and fill us with alarm. All this arises from our shortsightedness, and sometimes likewise from the extent of our pride. We form our judgments according to the laws of human justice; and not according to the enlarged and profound views of universal aptitude, which is the justice of God. For want of positive rules for arriving at the truth, we will mention a fact, to which we cannot too strongly direct attention, for

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may serve to enlighten us; viz. that the more of virtue there is in man, of equity in the laws, of instruction and religion among the people, the more gentle are the reac tions: life is more pleasurable, and the general well-being

more certain.

This fact is highly important; it comprises the history of all times and of all places; it shows us the rule of the great reactions which overthrow empires; and there results from it, that the only solid foundation of the happiness of kings is the happiness of the people; as the only possible foundation of the happiness of the people is in liberty and virtue.

You.overturn a throne; you will have Danton and Robespierre. You overturn the altars; you will have scaffolds and executioners.

Man karna from animals several kinds of minay : the rurit telas lim how to excavate subtermined passages ; the beaver, to raise embankments; the swan, to navigue. Ba woman learns from them lessons very different though no less useful: the spider teaches her to spin; the batterfy, to imprint her dress with various colours; the bee, to extract the juice from the sweetest vegetables. It is not then without reason that the Greeks gave, not to the gods. but to a female, a goddess, to Ceres, to Minerva, the glory of these ingenious inventions. Man strives with nature, and each of his victories renders him more proud and unruly: woman, on the contrary, is softened and embellished by all her conquests; and the graces of our homes, and the

enjoyment of our well-being, are the invisible chains with which she binds us to civilisation.

In the vegetable kingdom the division is continued: man chooses from it all that may excite his courage, and woman all that may add to her beauty. The one has the forests, in which he exhibits his strength and his courage; the other has the meadows, to which she leads her flocks. It is on the flower-enamelled meads that woman appears to greatest advantage, whether dancing with her companions, or whether in solitude, she receives from nature the celestial thoughts of love and humanity.

In all countries women love flowers, in all countries they form nosegays of them; but it is only in the bosom of plenty that they conceive the idea of embellishing their dwellings with them. The cultivation of flowers among the peasantry indicates a revolution in all their feelings. It is a delicate pleasure, which makes its way through coarse organs; it is a creature, whose eyes are opened; it is the sense of the beautiful, a faculty of the soul which is awakened. Man, then, understands that there is in the gifts of nature a something more than is necessary for existence; colours, forms, odours, are perceived for the first time, and these charming objects have at last spectators. Those who have travelled in the country can testify, that a rose-tree under the window, a honeysuckle around the door of a cottage, are always a good omen to the tired traveller. The hand which cultivates flowers is not closed against the supplications of the poor, or the wants of the stranger.

We may read in the Mesnagerie (L'Art de bien Menager) of Xenophon, (a charming picture of conjugal union among the ancients,) how the pupil of Socrates has founded the duties of the man and woman upon the sweetest harmonies of nature. "And God made the body of the woman less vigorous than that of the man: on which account I am of

raises him up to heaven, would cause him to lose even his terrestrial empire.

Fortunately, nature is superior to our desires, and more generous than our wills.

In fact, man sighs and languishes at the feet of his mistress; but by the side of his companion amidst his children, he enjoys the plentitude of his being. He is the support, the protector of his family; all that is in him of noble, powerful, or generous, becomes excited and active. And yet he has lost nothing of his love; but, like his companion, he diffuses it over a greater number of objects: all these little hands which caress him, all these smiling countenances which surround him, recall to his mind her whom he loves; he recognises her in the smile of his children, and blesses her in their innocence. Ah! the graces of the young virgin never caused sweeter transports than those of the mother of a family! Love is happiness, for this world and for eternity.

Love, and your desires will be accomplished; love, and you will be happy; love, and all the powers of the earth will be at your feet. Love is a flame which burns in heaven, and of which the soft reflection extends to ourselves. Two worlds are open to it, two lives are bestowed upon it is by love that we redouble our being; that we approach to God.

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CHAPTER XVII.

OF MATERNAL LOVE-A

MORAL AND PHYSICAL LAW

OF NATURE.

"C'est ici que sa voix pieuse et solennelle

Nous expliquait un Dieu que nous sentions en elle;
Et nous montrant l'épi dans son germe enfermé,
La grappe distillant son breuvage embaumé,
Nous enseignait la foi par la reconnoissance
Et faisait admirer à notre simple enfance,
Comment l'astre et l'insecte invisible à nos yeux
Avaient ainsi que nous leur père dans les cieux.”

LAMARTINE.

ALL our earthly attachments are dictated by pleasure. Maternal love alone arises amid suffering. Imagine to yourself, says Plutarch, the sensations of woman in the earliest days of the world, when, after the pains of childbirth, she saw her new-born infant upon the ground covered with blood, and more resembling a flayed animal than a living creature. Doubtless she might have regarded it as an evil of which nature had just delivered her; no visible charms attracted her towards it; her heart was moved neither by the beauty of its form, nor by the sweetness of its voice, and yet, still feverish with her sufferings, still trembling with the anguish of parturition, she washes and caresses it, clothes it, and presses it to her bosom, constantly recommencing a toil which never fatigues her; and in exchange for so many sacrifices, receiving only cries and wailings.

Well, this power, which is stronger than pain or disgust; this power at which Plutarch is with reason astonished, is but an animal feeling, like the tenderness of the cat for its