'Messrs. Editors,--Of the solemn character of the duties devolving upon mothers, all writers agree to express the same sentiment. Where these duties are neglected, where a mother's fondness controls all without judgment and intelligence, the most unhappy consequences follow. I do not know where these have been drawn out in a more vivid and awful picture than in the late work, entitled Guy Rivers. It does not fall within your line to have to do with such works, yet I trust you will allow me to furnish an extract which does fall in with the practical object of your paper. Guy is a highwayman--a murderer--a cold blooded murderer--an outlaw--of most violent, headlong passions, which pause at nothing where their gratification is concerned, and yet he is a man of great shrewdness and of superior natural intellect. At the point where the extract is made, this man's course is approaching its catastrophe. In his den he sees its approach, and his mind is occupied with bitter reflection. With his Lieutenant this is his conversation; and when I think of what I have known of maternal weakness, I shudder to think how near to the life the picture may be. '"I do you wrong, Dillon--but on this subject I will have no one speak. I cannot be the man you would have me; I have been schooled otherwise. My mother has taught me a different lesson,--her teachings have doomed me, and these enjoyments are now all beyond my hopes." '"Your mother!" was the response of Dillon, in unaffected astonishment. '"Ay, man--my mother. Is there any thing wonderful in that? She taught me this lesson with her milk--she sung it in lullabies over my cradle--she gave it me in the plaything of my boyhood--her schoolings have made me the morbid, the fierce criminal, from whose association all the gentler virtues must always desire to fly. If, in the doom, which may finish my life of doom, I have any person to accuse of all, that person is--my mother!" '"Is this possible? Is it true? It is strange, very strange."