While the love of offspring is more or less strong in all, yet it does not manifest itself if there are other tendencies predominant in the character. Take a woman in whom the love of dress and society is most active; she will not care for offspring, if her circumstances are such that it would debar her from enjoying style or society; or if the artistic inclination is the strongest in her character she would not want offspring; or if great intellectual tastes are very strong and love of children only moderate, she would not want offspring; or where persons have consecrated themselves fully and unreservedly to a spiritual life in order to become spiritual parents to many, to them offspring would be a hindrance in their work. But where the domestic faculties are the strongest, the home is lonesome without children. In some the maternal instinct is exceedingly strong, for it manifests itself to such an extent as to become the ruling passion; nothing else but offspring can satisfy them. And this maternal passion is expressed in matchless language by Mr. Stephen Phillips:[1] "Lucrezia's sudden outburst of grief and rage against her lonely fate is, poetically speaking, one of the finest passages in the play:" [Footnote 1: Literary Digest, Dec., 1899.] GIOVANNI. Lucrezia! this is that old bitterness. LUCREZIA. Bitterness--am I bitter? strange, oh strange! How else? My husband dead and childless left. My thwarted woman--thoughts have inward turned, And that vain milk like acid in me eats. Have I not in my thought trained little feet To venture, and taught little lips to move Until they shaped the wonder of a word? I am long practiced. Oh, those children, mine, Mine, doubly mine; and yet I cannot touch them. I cannot see them, hear them--Does great God Expect I shall clasp air and kiss the wind Forever, and the budding cometh on? The burgeoning, the cruel flowering; At night the quickening splash of rain, at dawn That muffled call of babes how like to birds; And I amid these sights and sounds must starve I with so much to give perish of thrift! Omitted by His casual dew! GIOVANNI. Well, well, You are spared much; children can wring the heart.