Fate, however, breaks this tie. -- She is left a widow, perhaps,
without a sufficient provision; but she is not desolate! The pang
of nature is felt; but after time has softened sorrow into
melancholy resignation, her heart turns to her children with
redoubled fondness, and anxious to provide for them, affection
gives a sacred heroic cast to her maternal duties. She thinks
that not only the eye sees her virtuous efforts from whom all her
comfort now must flow, and whose approbation is life; but her
imagination, a little abstracted and exalted by grief, dwells on
the fond hope that the eyes which her trembling hand closed, may
still see how she subdues every wayward passion to fulfil the
double duty of being the father as well as the mother of her
children. Raised to heroism by misfortunes, she represses the
first faint dawning of a natural inclination, before it ripens
into love, and in the bloom of life forgets her sex -- forgets
the pleasure of an awakening passion, which might again have been
inspired and returned. She no longer thinks of pleasing, and
conscious dignity prevents her from priding herself on account of
the praise which her conduct demands. Her children have her love,
and her brightest hopes are beyond the grave, where her
imagination often strays.
