There is a child here, a happy quiet little creature holding gently to its two months of life. Sometimes they lay it beside me, I the more helpless of the two—perhaps the more ignorant—and equally dependent for the supply of my smallest need. I feel indecently large as I survey its minute perfections and the tiny balled fist lying in my great palm. The little creature fixes me with the wise wide stare of a soul in advance of its medium of expression; and I, gazing back at the mystery in those eyes, feel the thrill of contact between my worn and sustained self and the innocence of a little white child. It is wonderful to watch a woman’s rapturous familiarity with these newcomers. A man’s love has far more awe in it, and the passionate animal instinct of defence is wanting in him. “A woman shall be saved through the child-bearing,” said St Paul; not necessarily her own, but by participation in the great act of motherhood which is the crown and glory of her sex. She is the “prisoner of love,” caught in a net of her own weaving; held fast by little hands which rule by impotence, pursued by feet the swifter for their faltering. It seems incredible that this is what a woman will barter for the right to “live her own life”—surely the most empty of desires. Man—_vir_, woman—_femina_, go to make up _the_ man—_homo_. There can be no comparison, no rivalry between them; they are the complement of each other, and a little child shall lead them. It is easy to understand that desire to shelter under the dear mantle of motherhood which has led to one of the abuses of modern Romanism. I met an old peasant couple at Bornhofen who had tramped many weary miles to the famous shrine of Our Lady to plead for their only son. They had a few pence saved for a candle, and afterwards when they told me their tale the old woman heaved a sigh of relief, “Es wird bald gut gehen: Die da, Sie versteht,” and I saw her later paying a farewell visit to the great understanding Mother whom she could trust. Superstitious misapprehension if you will, but also the recognition of a divine principle. It was Behmen, I believe, who cried with the breath of inspiration, “Only when I know God shall I know myself”; and so man remains the last of all the riddles, to be solved it may be only in Heaven’s perfection and the light of the Beatific Vision. “Know thyself” is a vain legend, the more so when emphasised by a skull; and so I company with a friend and a stranger, and looking across at the white gate I wonder concerning the quiet pastures and still waters that lie beyond, even as Brother Ambrose wondered long years ago in the monastery by the forest.