Are there such mothers? Lives there one who, at Fashion’s bidding, stands back, nor presses her lips to the little marble form that once lay warm and quivering beneath her heart-strings?--who with undimmed eye recalls the trusting clasp of that tiny hand, the loving glance of that vailed eye, the music of that merry laugh--its low, pained moan, or its last fluttering heart-quiver?--who would not (rather than strange hands should touch the babe,) _herself_ robe its dainty limbs for burial?--who shrinks not, starts not, when the careless, business hand would remove the little darling from its cradle-bed, where loving eyes so oft have watched its rosy slumbers, to its last, cold, dreamless pillow?--who lingers not, _when all have gone_, and vainly strives, with straining eye, to pierce _below_ that little fresh laid mound?--who, when a merry group go dancing by, stops not, with sudden thrill, to touch some sunny head, or gaze into some soft blue eye, that has oped afresh the fount of her tears, and sent to the troubled lips the murmuring heart-plaint, “Would to God I had died for thee, my child--my child?”--who, when the wintry blast comes eddying by, sleeps not, because she cannot fold to her warm breast the little lonely sleeper in the cold churchyard? And oh! is there one, who, with such “treasure laid up in Heaven,” clings not the less to earth, strives not the more to keep her spirit undefiled, fears not the less the dim, dark valley, cheered by a cherub voice, inaudible save to the dying _mother_? Oh, stony-eyed, stony-hearted, relentless Fashion! turn for us day into night, if thou wilt; deform our women; half clothe, with flimsy fabric, our victim children; wring the last penny from the sighing, overtasked, toiling husband; _banish to the backwoods thy country cousin_, Comfort; reign supreme in the banquet hall; revel undisputed at the dance;--but when that grim guest, whom none invite--whom none dare deny--strides, with defiant front, across our threshold, stand back, thou heartless harlequin, and leave us alone with our dead: so shall we list the lessons those voiceless lips should teach us-- “All is vanity.” HOUSEHOLD TYRANTS. “A HUSBAND may kill a wife gradually, and be no more questioned than the grand seignor who drowns a slave at midnight.”--_Thackeray, on Household Tyrants._ Oh! Mr. Thackeray! I ought to have known from experience, that beauty and brains never travel in company--but I _was_ disenchanted when I first saw your nose, and I _did_ say that you were too stout to look intellectual. But I forgive you in consideration of the above paragraph, which, for truth and candor, ought to be appended to the four Gospels.