MAXIMS AND DEFINITIONS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1488, 22 May 1880, Page 26

MAXIMS AND DEFINITIONS.

By M. W. S.

I.

Every man love 3 bis hands. J could have selected come other property of man's body, but a man's hands will sufficiently ssrve my purpose. There is a similarity, but not anything approaching an identity, between a human being's love for hiß or her hands and a mother's love for her child. A man's hands are very useful, profitable, ornamental. If my hand were out off, I would probably enclose it In a vessel filled with spirits, and I would occasionally look at " the vanished hand," and certainly sigh, and possibly wepp. That hand was a piece of myßelf— n parbner in former joys and sorrows. That hand grasped in friendship other hands now living and warm, and other hands now— fihall I say, alas !— cold and and dead. Memory clings to that hand quite as closely as the spirit clinga to it, and memory, spirit; like, preserves that hand in the innermost recesses of my heart and brain. Can you not imagine, 0 reader, a Waterloo veteran addressing mournful retrospective monologues to tho leg which lies in a BAnotified reoesß, carefully embalmed in < « Dunville's Best Brand ?" That leg spurred his now dead ;vnd gone steed iato the thickest of the fray, fiom which both rider and horse emerged covered with powder, smoke, fiabre cnt.«, gore, and glory. But tbe pulses of both hand and fooS are eternally severed from heart and brain. Amputated feet and amputated hands are literally dead partners. If a man loves his hand, which has no heart, iuo goul, no eyes, no sroile, surely it is natural that a mother should love tho child r<f Her womb. That child is part and parcel of herself. It is a repetition in loving miniature of hor eyes, nose, lips, eara, brow, hands, fott. It i«, so to speak, a luiny of wax. On that wax, Nature has roughly copied her limbs, ber boues, her feature?, It is the mother's place to further

I develop the outline handed to her by Nature. ■ She is to lead the young mind, as the sun and air develop a flower in the bud Mother 1 it is for you to choose, either that your child should be a faint earthly duplioate of an angel, or anything but a faint copy of the tenants of the Prince of Darkness. The child takes you as its model — not the teacher— not the minister of religion — not the grandmother. Thou art solely responsible before God and man for the culture of thy child. What an awful responsibility J And ttiis serious and seldom-answered quea tion brings me to the other pregnant question : How solemn should be the ceremony attending the birth of a child. Napoleon's birth led to about twenty years of hellish war. A Howard's birth led to aa mariy years of peace and good-will for^ hundreds of unfortunates, lying neglected in filthy prisons. Wellington's birth led to the chaining of a monster in human shape on the rock of St. Helena. And each and all of tho graat historic nativities referred to, had an influence good or ill, which could have originated only in the seed sown by ancastors — near or far. The evil deeds of a great grandfather reappear in the child of yesterday, and parents wonder at traits which they cannot trace to themselves. Blood, human blood, is an ocean, not a mere rill ; and the human stream which trickles through the veins of any Individual human being, is influenced by other tributaries whose Bouroe dates back probably hundreds of yeara. Insanity in the first generation, may not appear until the tenth generation comes with tho lapse of years. In the intervening generations it is subdued into mere eccentricity. Nay, it is even a fact that the sons and daughters of lunatics are often quite sane ; that the sons and daughters ot drunkards, are sober ; and that the offspring of blind people have excellent eyes.

Let a Oonnaught woman go to the foot of the Pyrenees Mountains, aay to Pau, where ex-Queen of Spain rasided for a time. There the inhabitants are Basques. They fought for Don Carlos, the Pretender to the Spanish throne. Well, what will the Connaught woman hear there ? She will hear her own Irish language— Erse— only roinua the peculiar brogue. Among the Basques, among the Celtic Irish, among the Welsh, among the people of the Isle of Man (Mona), among the Scottish Highlanders, there is one and the same native language, varied only by local accente. And all the Celts— or nearly all— are in religion Koman Catholics. They are full of tradition, and prefer It to history; and they are all fond of a condensed representation in government, preferring the government of one to the reign of many. The Gauls and the Gaels are one, at the root. The apparent differences are in the branches. In Celtic Ireland a growing lad is a "gorsoon;" in the sunny land of France a boy is a " garcon." Philology and ethnology should never be dissociated. They are inseparably connected. French came into England with Edward of Normanby. Britain was actually made a great nation by invasion. All her invaders were actually her best friends in disguise. The Normans gave her law and chivalry, the Danes gave her experience in war, and built her fortifications. The Romans gave her roads so excellent that no engineer of modern date can rival them. Julius Ctesar would never have made a *' Tay bridge." The English, as a nation, have nfcver feared the consequence of adulteration What alloy is to gold, a mixture of breeds is to a nation. A race marrying people of its nation soon becomes weak in body and miud, and at length "dies out." Relation f> marrying relation ,is committing that which i 3 a crime against nature, and that which should be made a crime against society. If tbe records of idiot asylums could be attested, it would be fonnd that the marriages of, say cousins, are the cause of nnmeroua idiotic births.