by placing her under my temporary protection, he has made it especially my duty to serve,” was her reply.
In the general ignorance and vice of the population daily pouring into our country from foreign lands, Egeria finds new reason for activity, in the moral and intellectual advancement of all who are brought within her sphere of influence.
Egeria has been accused of being ambitious for her children. “I am ambitious for them,” she replies; “ambitious that they should occupy stations that may be as a vantage-ground from which to act for the public good.”
Notwithstanding this ambition, she has, to the astonishment of many in her own circle, consented that one of her sons should devote himself to mechanical pursuits. She was at first pitied for this, as a mortification to which she must certainly have been compelled, by her husband’s singular notions, to submit.
“You mistake,” said Egeria, to one who delicately expressed this pity to her; “my son’s choice of a trade had my hearty concurrence. I was prepared for it by the whole bias of his mind from childhood. He will excel in the career he has chosen, I have no doubt; for he has abilities equal to either of his brothers, and he loves the object to which he has devoted them. As a lawyer or physician he would, probably, have but added one to the number of médiocre practitioners who lounge through life with no higher aim than their own maintenance.”
“But then,” it was objected, “he would not have sacrificed his position in society.”
Egeria is human, and the sudden flush of indignation must have crimsoned the mother’s brow at this; and somewhat of scorn, we doubt not, was in the smile that curled her lip as she replied, “My son can afford to lose the acquaintance of those who cannot appreciate the true nobility and independence of spirit which have made him choose a position offering, as he believes, the highest means of development for his own peculiar powers, and the greatest probability, therefore, of his becoming useful to others.”
Our sketches are finished—imperfect sketches we acknowledge them. It would have been a labour of love to have rendered the
