e character of the child is
beyond calculation. Can any time separate the name of Monica from that
of her son Augustine? Never despairing, even when her son was deep
sunk in profligacy, watching, pleading, praying with such tears and
fervor that the Bishop of Carthage cried out in admiration, "Go thy
way; it is impossible that the son of these tears should perish!" And
she lived to see the child of her love all that her heart desired. Nor
are there in all literature more noble passages than those which St.
Augustine consecrates to the memory of a parent whom all ages have
crowned with the loftiest graces of motherhood.

Bishop Hall says of his mother, "She was a woman of rare sanctity."
And from her he derived that devoted spirit and prayerful dignity
which gave him such unbounded influence in the church to which his
life was consecrated. The "divine George Herbert" owed to his mother a
still greater debt, and the famous John Newton proposes himself as "an
example for the encouragement of mothers to do their duty faithfully
to their children." Every one is familiar with the picture which
represents Dr. Doddridge's mother teaching him, before he could read,
the Old and New Testament history from the painted tiles in the
chimney corner. Crowley, Thomson, Campbell, Goethe, Victor Hugo,
Schiller and the Schlegels, Canning, Lord Brougham, Curran, and
hundreds of our great men may say with Pierre Vidal:

"If aught of goodness or of grace
Be mine, hers be the glory;
She led me on in wisdom's path
And set the light before me."

Perhaps there was never a more wonderful example of maternal influence
than that of the Wesleys' mother. To use her own words, she cared for
her children as "one who works together with God in the saving of a
soul." She never considered herself absolved from this care, and her
letters to her sons when they were men are the wonder of all who read
them. Another prominent instance is that of Madame Bonaparte over her
son Napoleon. This is what he says of her: "She suffered nothing but
what was grand and elevated to take root in our souls. She abhorred
lying, and passed over none of our faults." How large a part the
mother of Washington played in the formation of her son's character,
we have only to turn to Irving's "Life of Washington" to see. And it
was her greatest honor and reward when the world was echoing with his
renown, to listen and calmly reply, "He has been a good son, and he
has