which made the Athletic improve his strength, by denying himself the pleasures of love; it was also from a desire of popular applause that certain ancient priests renounced the same pleasures, and often, as Boindin pleasantly observes of them, without any other recompense for their continence than the perpetual temptation it occasions,... 'The cause,' says Cardinal Richelieu, 'why a timorous mind perceives an impossibility in the most simple projects, when to an elevated mind the most arduous seems easy, is, because, before the latter the mountains sink, and before the former mole-hills are metamorphosed into mountains.'" The different motives that influence our conduct are thus stated:-- "A mother idolizes her son; 'I love him,' says she, 'for his own sake.' However, one might reply, you take no care of his education, though you are in no doubt that a good one would contribute infinitely to his happiness; why, therefore, do not you consult some men of sense about him, and read some of the works written on this subject? 'Why, because,' says she, 'I think I know as much of this matter as those authors and their works.' But how did you get this confidence in your own understanding? Is it not the effect of your indifference? An ardent desire always inspires us with a salutary distrust of ourselves. If we have a suit at law of considerable consequence, we visit counsellors and attorneys, we consult a great number, and examine their advice. Are we attacked by any of those lingering diseases, which incessantly place around us the shades and horrors of death? We seek physicians, compare their opinions, read physical books, we ourselves become little physicians. Such is the conduct prompted by a warm interest. With respect to the education of children, if you are not influenced in the same manner, it is because you do not love your son as well as yourself. 'But,' adds the mother, 'what then should be the motive of my tenderness?' Among fathers and mothers, I reply, some are influenced by the desire of perpetuating their name in their children; they properly love only their names; others are fond of command, and see in their children their slaves. The animal leaves its young when their weakness no longer keeps them in dependence; and paternal love becomes extinguished in almost all hearts, when children have, by their age or station, attained to independence. 'Then,' said the poet Saadi, 'the father sees nothing in them but greedy heirs,' and this is the cause, adds some poet, of the extraordinary love of the grandfather for his grandchildren; he considers them as the enemies of his enemies. There are, in short, fathers and mothers, who make their children their playthings and their pastime. The loss of this plaything would be insupportable to them; but would their affliction prove that they loved the child for itself? Everybody knows this passage in the life of M. de Lauzun: he was in the Bastile; there, without books, without