Often a father, engaged in some especial career, loses sight of the literary or artistic movement which interests his son in early manhood. Then is the time when an intelligent, well-informed mother could initiate him in pursuits which she has loved and cultivated all her life. She could point out to him good authors and books worth reading, read with him, teach him to reject dangerous writers and bad books, and stimulate his taste for study, by directing it to noble objects. Surely a mother is bound to cherish the body and the soul of her child. Indeed, her place may be more easily filled with respect to the details of physical education, than to those of intellectual and moral training. Many persons can assist her in the former; with regard to the latter, she often stands alone, and sometimes surrounded by obstacles. To follow a young man's mental development and course of study, to watch over him and guide him with the authority belonging to a rectitude of judgment which carries conviction along with it, and to an enlightened understanding which unites with goodness in inspiring admiration and confidence--all this presupposes a rare combination of mental qualities. {210} How many mothers there are who lose their hold upon a son's soul because they have not borne, nursed, reared, and nourished his understanding as well as his physical being. To be a mother, a mother in all the elevation, extent, and depth of that great name! This aim alone justifies a woman's noblest efforts to acquire the highest intellectual culture. But if you agree to favor the men development of women, for the sake even of domestic usefulness, accept this development in its completeness; do not impose upon it arbitrary limits. There are minds that cannot unfold in mutilation or inaction, which need expansion, as St. Augustine says, to become strong. A woman who, from a sentiment for art or literature, has developed talent, does not lose, by becoming skilful, the advantages that mediocre faculties would have given her. We may feel sure that gifts of this nature answer to duties, and find themselves in harmony with the providential destiny of their possessors. I do not believe, with M. de Maistre, that science in petticoats, as he calls it, or talent of any description whatsoever, makes a woman less excellent as a wife or mother.