"I shall soon meet you again in heaven," and sweetly fell asleep in Jesus.

If parents do not obtain and keep the mastery of the will, they place an almost insurmountable obstacle in the way of their children ever being converted and saved. They are either never converted, or, if converted, are given to perpetual backslidings, and make little or no progress in piety. While those whose wills have been subjected to parental authority in early life, are likely to be early converted, and afterwards to prove steadfast in their allegiance and obedience to God.

THE WILL CONQUERED.

THE following fact occurred in the family of a pious minister :

"Electra," said her mother to a little daughter, of two and a half years old playing on the floor, "bring me that apple, my dear." She looked at her mother, and said, "No," with indifference, and resumed her play. Her mother rejoined, “Bring me that apple instantly ;" and was answered, "I wont." Things now became in earnest; and after several more orders and refusals the case was resigned to the father, who was present, and observed the scene. With a tone of authority, and yet benevolence, he reiterated the mandate: "Take that apple to your mother, my child!" Electra arose and went to the place where the apple was, picked up a chip that was near it, returned, threw it into her mother's lap, and was going to her play. Her father here

took hold of her, brought her near him, expostulated, warned, and then re-ordered her. Her sullenness deepened into silence and malignity—my will be done, was her deliberate position. Her father took down the provided birch, and very dispassionately applied it to the obstinate offender. Electra screamed, and

begged, and called for her mother, who first interfered, and then, not succeeding, in a flood of tears left the room. Her father forebore, and tried her again. She walked, pouting and sobbing, to the apple, stood still near it, and said—she could not pick it up. Her father understood the nature of her inability, and its true relation to accountability. He paused for some minutes. Electra looked alternately at the apple and at him,-pouted, rubbed her eyes, and said again that she could not pick up the apple. Another whipping was the consequence. Electra screamed louder than ever, begged and promised. On this her father tried her again. She went to the apple, stood still, held her eyes to the floor, said and did nothing. Here some sympathetic spectators-friends of the family visitingbegan to plead and apologize for the sufferer, and insinuated that it was useless and tyrannous to persist. Her father, with a look, gave them their answer, and his sentiments. He again applied the birch, and let not his soul spare for her crying. As soon as he ceased, while his steady carriage had awed the circle into silence, Electra showed another creature; she ran to the apple, took it up, and brought it to her father. Her action spoke her ob

stinacy gone, her pride subdued, her temper humbled, tender, penitent. Her mother was called. As soon as she entered the apartment-"Electra," said her father, "put this apple where it was on the carpet;" she obeyed. Again said he "Take it up, and carry it to your mother." She obeyed with alacrity and tears. "Come here, my daughter.” She came. To the questions, "Are you sorry?" and others like it, she assented; constantly opening her arms and raising her lips for the caresses of her father.

Her mother then began her confession-asked pardon for the improper strength of her feelings, and acknowledged that her love for the child was spurious in comparison with that of her husband. The others united in the acknowledgment.

THE MOTHER OF BYRON.

LORD BYRON was afflicted with a club foot; and, when young, he submitted to some very painful operations to have the deformity removed, but with no success. His mother was a proud, passionate, and wicked woman, and even the yearnings of natural affection seemed stifled. There is no good proof that her son, naturally, had a worse disposition than other children; but there was in him a great power for good or evil, waiting only to be quickened into life. Let us see the influence his mother exerted on this brilliant and powerful mind.

The readers of Byron's life must have shuddered to hear him speak of his mother. Moore, the

biographer of Byron, speaks three times of this fact, and the passages are so remarkable that I will transcribe them literally. The first is brief, but

significant :

"On the subject of his deformed foot, Byron described the feeling of horror and humiliation that came over him when his mother, in one of her fits of passion, called him a lame brat !"—Vol. i, p. 21.

The second passage is scarcely less significant :"But in the case of Lord Byron, disappointment met him at the very threshold of life. His mother, to whom his affections first naturally and with ardour turned, either repelled them rudely, or capriciously trifled with them. In speaking of his early days to a friend at Genoa, a short time before his departure for Greece, he traced his first feelings of pain and humiliation to the coldness with which his mother had received his caresses in infancy, and the frequent taunts on his personal deformity with which she wounded him."-P. 146.

This passage is only excelled in dreadfulness by the following:

"He had spoken of his mother to Lord Sligo, and with a feeling that seemed little short of aversion. 'Some time or other,' said Byron, 'I will tell you why I thus feel towards her.' A few days after, when they were bathing together in the Gulf of Lepanto, he referred to his promise, and, pointing to his naked leg, exclaimed: 'Look there! it is to her false delicacy at my birth I owe that deformity;

and yet, as long as I can remember, she has never ceased to taunt and reproach me with it. Even a few days before we parted for the last time, on my leaving England, she, in one of her fits of passion, uttered an imprecation on me, praying that I might prove as ill-formed in mind as I am in body!' His look and manner in relating the frightful circumstance, can only be conceived by those who have seen him in a similar state of excitement."-P. 198.

What an imprecation from the lips of a woman, and that woman a mother! "Praying that I might prove as ill-shapen in mind as I am in body!" The prayer was more than answered. Misanthrope, libertine, with all his giant powers, he became shockingly "ill-formed in mind." His pen is the vehicle of gall and bitterness. His most brilliant works are immersed in pollution. He has written a work which lies on the table of the prostitute. The son of such a mother has furnished abandoned women a book, at which, as a fountain, thousands have drank and perished.

Ah! mothers work close up to the fountain of life-mothers may make Byrons or Paysons-devils or angels. They can, with Divine assistance, make their offspring a fold of Christ's lambs, or, with Satan's assistance, a den of vipers.

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