other colour than that of the leaves. But as he watches his plant
from day to day, and from hour to hour, the case which contains the
flower divides, and betrays first one colour and then another, till the
shell gradually subsides more and more towards the stalk, and the figure
of the flower begins now to be seen, and its radiance and its pride to
expand itself to the ravished observer.--Every lesson that the child
leans, every comment that he makes upon it, every sport that he pursues,
every choice that he exerts, the demeanour that he adopts to his
playfellows, the modifications and character of his little fits of
authority or submission, all make him more and more an individual to
me, and open a wider field for my sagacity or my prophecy, as to what he
promises to be, and what he may be made.

But what gives, as has already been observed, the point and the finish
to all the interest I take respecting him, lies in the vast power I
possess to influence and direct his character and his fortune. At first
it is abstract power, but, when it has already been exerted (as the
writers on politics as a science have observed of property), the sweat
of my brow becomes mingled with the apple I have gathered, and my
interest is greater. No one understands my views and projects entirely
but myself, and the scheme I have conceived will suffer, if I do not
complete it as I began.

And there are men that say, that all this mystery, the most beautiful
attitude of human nature, and the crown of its glory, is pure
selfishness!

Let us now turn from the view of the parental, to that of the filial
affection.

The great mistake that has been made on this subject, arises from
the taking it nakedly and as a mere abstraction. It has been sagely
remarked, that when my father did that which occasioned me to come into
existence, he intended me no benefit, and therefore I owe him no thanks.
And the inference which has been made from this wise position is, that
the duty of children to parents is a mere imposture, a trick, employed
by the old to defraud the young out of their services.

I grant most readily, that the mere material ligament that binds
together the father and the child, by itself is worthless, and that he
who owes nothing more than this to his father, owes him nothing. The
natural, unanimated relationship is like the grain of mustard-seed in
the discourses of Jesus Christ, "which indeed is the least of all seeds;
but, when it is