WATCH, MOTHER, WATCH. BY MRS. MARY A. KIDDER. MOTHER! watch the little feet, Little feet will go astray, Guide them, Mother, while you may. Mother! watch the little hand, Picking berries by the way; Tossing up the fragrant hay. Messengers of light and love. Mother! watch the little tongue, Prattling eloquent and wild; Mother! watch the little heart, Beating soft and warm for you; Wholesome lessons now impart, Keep, O keep that young heart true, Extricating every weed, Sowing good and precious seed; WHAT unthankfulness is it to forget our consolations, and to look only upon matter of grievance; to think so much upon two or three crosses as to forget an hundred blessings. Sibs. THIS princess was the daughter of Francis I. and Maria Theresa of Austria. She grew up an amiable, pretty girl, possessing few of those traits which adorned the character of her excellent mother. Surrounded by the allurements of an European court, she readily yielded to their seductive influ ences. Nothing particularly interesting occurred in her history previous to her marriage with the Emperor Napoleon. At this time, Bonaparte was in the zenith of his glory. He was strongly attached to the lovely Josephine, but his unrestrained ambition led him to seek a divorce. As soon as his intentions were known, the sovereigns of Europe sought the honor of an alliance with the Emperor of France. He decided to accede to the proposition of Austria. All the needful arrangements having been made, Maria left the home of her early days, and proceeded to meet her future husband. Napoleon had never seen his intended bride, but he embraced her with all the ardor of youth. She was received by the French with great rejoicing. The marriage ceremony was celebrated with much splendor, April 4, 1810. She was nineteen years old, and Napoleon forty-two. The sovereigns of Europe vied with each other in paying homage to the youthful empress. The joy of the French was unbounded when it was announced that Maria had become the mother of an heir to the throne. During Bonaparte's invasion of Russia, Maria was appointed regent. Her disappointment and anguish were great, when she learned its disastrous result. Bonaparte returned to Paris, filled with dark and gloomy forebodings; his army having been nearly destroyed, and the allied sovereigns were preparing to enter France. The crisis was a dangerous one. Sorrowfully did Napoleon take leave of his wife and son. It was the last time he ever saw them. As dangers thickened around the capital, Maria's affection for her husband was put to a test. Her father had joined the coalition against France. A character like hers would naturally shun trials, and it is not surprising that she refused to share the misfortunes of her husband, and threw herself upon the protection of the allies. How unlike the devoted Josephine. Gladly would she have administered consolation to Bonaparte in this time of need. He had always looked to her for comfort and counsel, and now did he deeply feel the desertion of Maria Louisa. "Who can calculate the effect," he said, "which would have been produced by my youthful consort running through the ranks of the army and the national guard, holding her young son in her arms, presenting him to all, and placing herself and him under the protection of their courage and their bayonets? Whenever I think of it, the anguish abridges my life of an hour." Instead of accompanying him to Elba, and striving to soothe him in his sorrows, Maria chose to return to Austria. Here she remained, indifferent to the fortunes of her husband, till he landed again on the coast of France. Then she sighed to return to him, and to enjoy once more the honors of an empress; but her sense of propriety would not allow this. She knew that she had abandoned him of her own free will in the hour of his downfall. But Napoleon's reign was short. "Maria, from the palaces of Vienna, looked on, apparently with imperturbable equanimity, as the star of her husband's glory paled and faded away on the field of Waterloo." There is no evidence that she shed a tear, or experienced an emotion of regret as he was borne like a caged lion to that barren rock which was to be his prison and his grave. She soon left her father's court and retired to Parma, where she lived in much splendor. It is thought that she was secretly married to Count Neipperg, a Hungarian soldier; but the marriage was not acknowledged till after the death of Napoleon. In contemplating the life of Napoleon, as connected with Maria Louisa, we are forcibly reminded "that it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." He cast away Josephine and married Maria, hoping thereby to secure a successor to his empire. But a just retribution awaited him. In the time of his greatest extremity he was cast off and deserted by Maria. That son, whose birth was hailed with such acclamations of joy, died at the age of eighteen, unmourned and forgotten by his mother. Maria too was forgotten. She died Dec. 17, 1847, aged fifty-seven years. "Her death caused none to mourn, and none but those who inherited her estate to rejoice." It is the part of a woman, like her own beautiful planet, to cheer the dawn and darkness, to be both the morning The light of her eye is the and evening star of a man's life. first to rise and the last to set upon manhood's day of trial and suffering. MEMORY. BY M. A. C. "The music of Carryl was like the memory of joys that are past, pleasant yet mournful to the soul." OSSIAN. MUSIC has a strange and mysterious power over the soul of man. From the slumbers of the past it wakens memories sad, yet sweet. Perchance those who once listened with us to catch each note of harmony, are severed from us by long distance, or have ceased to love us, or in the dim vista of bygone years, our memory lingers in their hearts only among the shadows of the past. Perchance the melodies which strike upon our ears were sung by those who are now joining the anthems of the saints in glory. "Yes, Music hath the key of Memory, And thoughts and visions buried deep and long, There is a magic in the recollection of past happy hours, which nothing in life can equal. Memory brings them before us, divested of all which might have dimmed their brightness, like roses in whose fragrance we forget the thorns which wounded us when we plucked them. In the dimness of the twilight hour, in the silence of midnight, visions of past joys come before us, and we are sad because they are no No more! it is the knell of departed happiness, of hopes crushed in their budding loveliness, of flowers blighted in their opening beauty; of familiar faces, once bright with the sunshine of life, now shrouded in the gloom of the grave. When the tide of memory flows over our souls, how it bears with it more. "The sudden images of vanished things, The shadows of the past, which come and go, Which a storm's working to the surface brings." We recall the days of our childhood, when life was one sunny dream, when no care for the present or anxiety for the future disturbed the peaceful serenity of our souls, and friend |