" How like maternal solicitude is this! Solicitude
for the most part lest the offspring should come to have wishes and
feelings of its own, which may occasion many difficulties, fancied
or real. It is this that is at the bottom of the whole mischief; but
whether this last proposition is granted or no, at any rate we observe
that Christina had a sufficiently keen appreciation of the duties of
children towards their parents, and felt the task of fulfilling them
adequately to be so difficult that she was very doubtful how far
Ernest and Joey would succeed in mastering it. It is plain in fact
that her supposed parting glance upon them was one of suspicion. But
there was no suspicion of Theobald; that he should have devoted his
life to his children- why, this was such a mere platitude, as almost
to go without saying.
How, let me ask, was it possible that a child only a little past
five years old, trained in such an atmosphere of prayers and hymns and
sums and happy Sunday evenings- to say nothing of daily repeated
beatings over the said prayers and hymns, etc., about which our
authoress is silent- how was it possible that a lad so trained
should grow up in any healthy or vigorous development, even though
in her own way his mother was undoubtedly very fond of him, and
sometimes told him stories? Can the eye of any reader fail to detect
the coming wrath of God as about to descend upon the head of him who
should be nurtured under the shadow of such a letter as the foregoing?
I have often thought that the Church of Rome does wisely in not
allowing her priests to marry.
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