e could not
break; we are loth to leave a spot in which are accumulated the fondest
associations of early life. Would the mother, if she could, forget the
child that slumbers beneath the flower-crowned sod of the family cemetery?
"Where," in the beautiful language of Irving, "is the child, that would
willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember be but to
lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom
he mourns? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he
most loved and he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing of
its portals, would accept consolation that was to be bought by
forgetfulness? And when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the
gentle tear of recollection, when the sudden anguish and the convulsive
agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved, is softened away
into pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness,
who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes
throw a passing cloud even over the bright hour of gayety, yet who would
exchange it even for the song of pleasure or the burst of revelry? No;
there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song; there is a recollection
of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living!" How
passionately we cling to those memories of a sainted mother, which crowd in
rapid succession upon our minds!

"Weep not for her! Her memory is the shrine
Of pleasing thoughts, soft as the scent of flowers,
Calm as on windless eve the sun's decline,
Sweet as the song of birds among the bowers."

What a purifying and restraining influence does the memory of a pious
parent's love, exert upon the wayward child! When he bends in mournful
recollection over the grave of a sainted mother, how must every
heart-string break, and with what remorse he reviews his past life of
wickedness and filial disobedience. The memory of that mother's love and
kindness to him, haunts him in all his revels, and draws him back, as if by
magnetic force, from scenes of riot and of ruin. Can he think of that
mother's prayers and teachings and tears of solicitude, and not feel
deeply, and often savingly, his own guilt and ingratitude? If there is a
memory of home-life which allures him to heaven, it is the recollection of
her love and pious efforts to save him.

The child who lives in exile from his country and his home, is soothed in
the midst of