prehending any other. A mother's approbation, however, may often be made use of as a natural and appropriate reward, and this without any of those direct but disproportioned praises which induce an idea of peculiar merit on the part of a child. Happily for the mother, nature has given her the use of a purer language than that of praise, in which she may hold sweet communion with the soul of her child. It is that of sympathy, which should never be withheld. "It is safer," says Miss Hamilton, "to sympathize with children than to praise them;" and a mother, above all other beings has perpetually at her command, those innumerable links in the great chain of sympathy, which consist of peculiar tones of voice, caresses, looks, and familiar expressions, down to the minutest touch which thrills along the chords of feeling, and produces an answering . echo, true to nature's sweetest music, from the tender and unsophisticated spirit of the child.
We should be careful, too, in the use of maternal approbation, lest children, who have built too much upon this as their reward, should grow up with an inordinate thirst for approbation in general; for though we justly grieve over the situation of a being so isolated and shut out from kindly sympathies, as not to regard the praise or blame of others; yet it is but too evident, from the observation of every day, that no human beings are so often exposed to disappointment, and none in reality so weak, as those who derive their highest satisfaction from the approbation of their fellow-creatures.
Still, in connexion with a mother's influence, and with the natural means which are placed within her power for exercising that influence in the management of her children, it must be allowed that praise and blame are legitimate instruments capable of being used with the most beneficial effect by a judicious woman. For, after all, a system of praise and blame seems to be that which is most adapted to our weakness; in consideration to which, we have been taught by the word of God, to look for consolation and support, less as moral agents to the intrinsic
