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CHAPTER VII.
ON GESTATION.
"Sweet is the image of the brooding dove,
Holy as heaven a mother's tender love:
The love of many prayers and many tears,
Which changes not with dim declining years—
The only love which, on this teeming earth,
Asks no return for passion's wayward birth."
Mrs. Norton.
Holy as heaven a mother's tender love:
The love of many prayers and many tears,
Which changes not with dim declining years—
The only love which, on this teeming earth,
Asks no return for passion's wayward birth."
Mrs. Norton.
"The mother, in her office, holds the key of the soul."
Old Play.
Old Play.
HAVING spoken of the various phases of woman's life up to her maturity in the preceding chapters, we have now to consider one of the most interesting of all the circumstances of her life, at once pleasing and endearing, when she is called upon to give birth to her offspring. In early life the distinction between the sexes was by no means marked: there was the same general outline, the same form and cast of features, the same feeling of isolation—each seemed to live for itself. As the softer passions, however, become developed, the man
