ible principles of
affection is the partaking of a common nature; and as man is a species
by himself, so to a certain degree is every nation and every family; and
this consideration, when added to the moral and spiritual ties already
treated of, undoubtedly has a tendency to give them their zest and
perfection.

But even this is not the most agreeable point of view in which we may
consider the filial affection. I come back to my first position,
that where there is no imagination, there can be no passion, and by
consequence no love. No parent ever understood his child, and no child
ever understood his parent. We have seen that the affectionate parent
considers his child like a flower in the bud, as a mine of power that
is to be unfolded, as a creature that is to act and to pass through he
knows not what, as a canvas that "gives ample room and verge enough,"
for his prophetic soul to hang over in endless visions, and his
intellectual pencil to fill up with various scenes and fortunes. And, if
the parent does not understand his child, certainly as little does the
child understand his parent. Wherever this relation subsists in
its fairest form, the parent is as a God, a being qualified with
supernatural powers, to his offspring. The child consults his father
as an oracle; to him he proposes all his little questions; from him he
learns his natural philosophy, his morals, his rules of conduct, his
religion, and his creed. The boy is uninformed on every point; and the
father is a vast Encyclopedia, not merely of sciences, but of feelings,
of sagacity, of practical wisdom, and of justice, which the son consults
on all occasions, and never consults in vain. Senseless and inexpert is
that parent, who endeavours to govern the mind by authority, and to lay
down rugged and peremptory dogmas to his child; the child is fully and
unavoidably prepared to receive every thing with unbounded deference,
and to place total reliance in the oracle which nature has assigned him.
Habits, how beautiful! Inestimable benefit of nature, that has given
me a prop against which to sustain my unripened strength, and has not
turned me loose to wander with tottering steps amidst the vast desert of
society!

But it is not merely for contemplative wisdom that the child honours
his parent; he sees in him a vast fund of love, attachment and sympathy.
That he cannot mistake; and it is all a mystery to him. He says, What
am I, that I should be the object of t