through a course of crime, too revolting for description. Still he confesses that he was never able utterly to drive from his mind the admonitions of his mother, nor to think of them, amid his deepest obduracy, without emotion.
Is not this a peculiar point of view, from which to contemplate maternal influence? The good and the wise take pleasure in expressing their obligations to this hallowed source. Bacon traced back to it, as to a shaded fountain, his intellectual eminence. Washington acknowledged it as the teacher of his self-control, that rudiment of his greatness. Edwards referred the germ of his piety to the prayers of the saintly one who gave him birth. But here is a different suffrage, a voice as from the lower parts of the earth, bearing concurrent testimony. Such a disclosure gains force from its rare occurrence. Virtue and purity are willing to reveal the origin of those principles, which have guided them, but it is difficult to extort from wickedness, commendation and honor for the precepts which it has violated.
Here is an instance of a man plunging into the vortex of guilt, and laboring to dismiss from his mind everything just and holy. Still, by his side has walked, to his soul has clung, with his conscience has wrestled, the voice of a dying mother. It has prevailed sometimes to soften a heart, which was like a "piece of the nether millstone." May it not yet prove like the rod of Moses to the flinty rock of Horeb?
