womanhood, feels, and cannot help feeling, that
if her mother had not been her mother, she
would never have chosen her even as an ordinary
acquaintance. These are bitter discoveries,
ending in sharp daily agonies, irremediable,
incommunicable. Happily the instinctive natural bond,
added to the familiar habit of a lifetime, is so
strong, that sometimes the sufferers themselves
do not seem to feel their position quite so keenly
as lookers-on do, who own no softening influence
of custom or affection.

These sufferings are none the less real because
they sometimes take the comical aspect. Witty
writers have exhausted their wit on the sad
spectacle, common enough in this commercial
country, of parvenus, coarse and vulgar, who
are perfect terrors to their educated children.
But. this is a small misfortune. A man seldom
raises himself very high without having
something to give to society equivalent to what he
has won from it. Hundreds now-a-days carry
with them into handsome houses, noble halls,
and even palace doors, the traces of their humble
origin—not pleasant, indeed, and sometimes
comical,—but quite bearable, from the
inherent worth or talent of the individual, and
never warranting the slightest complaint or
disrespect from a dutiful child. Far worse to
bear is that ingrained coarseness of nature, not
breeding, common to all ranks, which makes
many a daughter blush scarlet at things her
mother says and does, which yet she can neither
prevent nor notice. And what can be sorer for
a young man, high-minded and chivalrous, than
to live in perpetual dread lest his father, the
head of the house, should disgrace it by some
small meanness, some " indirect crook't ways,"
which force any honest observer, even his own
son, to perceive, that though he may be a
Crœsus of money, or a nobleman in rank, he is
certainly not a gentleman?

Between these opposite poles of tragedy and
comedy lies an intermediate range of miseries,
small indeed, but sorely hard to bear. One is
when, as is patent to everybody except the
parents themselves, the elder generation is, in
mental and moral calibre, decidedly inferior to
the younger. Not bad people, but only narrow:
narrow in thought, and word, and deed; unable
to recognise that what lies beyond their own
limited vision has any existence whatsoever.
These sort of people are very trying in all
relations, the more so because, so far as they go,
they are often exceedingly estimable. Only if
nature has made one of their children in any
way different from themselves, of larger mould
and wider capacities, the extent to which that
child is martyrised, even with the very best
intentions, is sometimes incredible.

Yet outside, everybody says what excellent
parents they are, and what a happy home their
children must have! a fact of which they
themselves are most thoroughly convinced. How can
the young people weary of it for a moment? How
can Mary, a charming, well educated, and
perhaps very clever young woman, desire any other
companion than her mother ? Of course a
mother is the best and closest companion for every
girl. Most true, but not "of course," nor
in virtue of the mere accident of motherhood.
Sympathy comes by instinct, and confidence
must be, not exacted, but won. Mary may have
the strongest filial regard for that dear and good
woman, to whom she owes and is ready to pay
every duty that a daughter ought, and yet be
inwardly conscious that nature has made the
two so different in tastes, feelings, disposition,
that if she were to open her heart to her, her
mother would not understand her in the least.
Not to speak of the difference of age, greater
or less, and the not unnatural way in which
elderly people who do not retain youthfulness
of heart, as happily many do to the last day
of life, grow out of sympathy with the young.
But Providence having constituted these two
mother and daughter, they must get on together
somehow. And so they do. Though Mary in
her secret soul may writhe sometimes, she loves
mamma very dearly, and would love her better
still if she would only let her alone to follow
her own tastes in any lawful way. But this
mamma cannot do. She is like the goose with
the young cygnet, always pitying herself that
her child is so unlike other people's children,
wearing the girl's life out with endless
complaints and impossible exactions, until at last
Mary sinks into passive indifference, or bitter
old-maidism, or plunges into a reckless
marriage—anything, anywhere, only to get away
from home.

John's case is not so hard, in one sense, he
being a man and Mary only a woman, but it
is far more dangerous. She may be made
merely wretched; he wicked, by this narrow
vexatious rule. Why should John, who is only
three-and-twenty, presume to hold a different
opinion on politics, religion, or aught else, from
his father? Papa is the older, and of course
knows best; papa has had every opportunity of
forming his judgment on every subject; and
he has formed it, and there it is, carefully
cut and dried, easy and comfortable, without
any of those doubts which are the torture and
yet the life of all ardent, youthful spirits. There
it is, and John must abide by it, hold his tongue,
and take his obnoxious newspapers and heterodox
books out of the way; which John, being
a lover of peace, and trained to honourable
obedience, very likely does; but he cherishes
either a private contempt—we are so scornful
when we are young!—or an angry rebellion
against the narrow-mindedness that would
compel him into his father's way of thinking,
simply because it is his father's. Be the lad
ever so good, a lurking sense of injustice cannot
fail to chafe him, and injustice is one of the most
fatal elements that, at any age, can come into
the sacred relation between parent and child.

Parents know not what they are doing when
they rouse this feeling—the burning, stinging
consciousness of being unfairly treated,
disbelieved, misjudged, selfishly or wantonly punished.
You find it in the maddest mob, the roughest
public school, the most riotous public assembly,