G2 MEMOIH OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. II. 



kept up ! How much is the unity of subject preserved ; how true 

 to nature is the whole picture ! The fond mother represented 

 sitting with her young children fast asleep in her lap, bending 



' With her soft and delicate breath, over them murmuring low,' 



and kissing them so often, that, when taken from her, 



* On their lips her sweet kiss lingers ; " 



while yet, with that strange, curious paradox of the mind, 



' She weeps, to see the young things grow so fair. ' 



How exceedingly natural tke last idea is ! how consonant with 

 the experience of mothers of all mothers, I firmly believe, who 

 have ever fondly loved their offspring ! Yet it is a strange and 

 most curious phenomenon of the mind, that the seeing beloved 

 objects growing more endearing should make the heart over- 

 flow with tears. It is too curious a subject not to have received 

 the notice of those who are fond of metaphysical inquiries. 

 Isaac Taylor, referring to the subject, says : ' No position of the 

 mind is more peculiar than the one it occupies when, at the 

 same moment, the reasons of hope are irrefragable, and the 

 motives of despondency are overwhelming/ (Saturday Even- 

 ing). And I recollect to have read, in 'The Confessions of 

 an Opium-Eater,' a reference to this, in which De Quincey 

 gives the only attempt at explanation of this phenomenon 

 which I have seen. That writer mentions, that he could never 

 walk out in a beautiful summer day, and see all nature pro- 

 lific in life; the air, and earth, and waters teeming with 

 myriads of animate beings ; the hills crowned with forests, 

 clothed with full foliage, and the valleys rich with the freshest 

 verdure, he could not look on all this without a deep feeling 

 of mournfulness coming on him, which he conceives most truly 

 to depend upon the antithesis between summer and the pro- 

 fusion of life, and winter and the silence of death. And follow- 

 ing out the subject, he conceives it a fixed law of the human 

 mind, that if two objects stand in relation to each other, as 

 things utterly different, the one will suggest the other. Thus 

 does the wild profusion of life suggest the solitary silent loneli- 

 ness of death ; and thus to the mother will the sight of her 

 young babes, day after day growing fairer, awaken in her mind 



