Calmly, piously, without a shade of sorrow for the past or of solicitude for the future, save that mysterious and yet natural anxiety which must haunt every mind, however well prepared to endure its final separation from the body, as the hour of dissolution approaches, did she expect the morning. This anxiety and this alone was blended with the various feelings which coursed through the soul of Mary during this the last night of her existence. It was in such a frame of mind that Mary, in the solitude of that last earthly night, diverting her attention entirely from the terrible shock she was about to undergo on the morrow, thought upon her native land, still dear though still ungrateful, a prey to the fierce contentions of her own factious offspring--of her son, torn at the earliest dawn of his affections from the arms of a mother, nurtured among those who would teach him to eradicate every warmer recollection--to pluck forth, as if it were an offending eye, every lingering tenderness for that being, who, amid all her sins and all her sorrows, had never ceased to love him with an entire and perfect love. There is, in truth, something more evidently divine, partaking more nearly of that which we believe to be the very essence of Divinity, in a mother’s love, than in any other pang or passion--for every passion, how sweet soever it may be, has something of a pang mingled with it--in the human soul. All other love is liable to diminution, to change, or to extinction; all other love may be alienated by the neglect, chilled by the coldness, frozen to the core by the worthlessness, of the object once beloved. All other affections are influenced by a thousand trivial circumstances of time and place: absence may weaken their influence, time obscure their vividness, and, above all, custom may rob them of their value. But on the love of a mother--commencing as it does before the object of her solicitude possesses form or being; springing from agony and sorrow; ripening in anxiety and care, and reaping too often the bitter harvest of ingratitude--all incidental causes, all external influences, are powerless and vain. Time but excites her admiration, but increases her solicitude, but redoubles her affections. Absence but causes her to dwell with a more engrossing memory on him from whom her heart is never absent. Custom but hallows the sentiment to which nature has given birth. Neglect and coldness but cause her to strain every nerve to merit more and more the poor return of filial love--the solitary aim of her existence, if heartlessly denied to her. Nay, worthlessness itself but binds her more closely to him whom the hard world has cast aside, to find a refuge in the only bosom which will not perceive his errors or credit his utter destitution.