"That to the world are children; Through these it feels the glow "Come to me, O ye children! And whisper in my ear What the birds and the winds are singing "For what are all our contrivings, When compared with your caresses, "Ye are better than all the ballads And all the rest are dead." "Children may teach us one blessed, one enviable art-the art of being easily happy. Kind nature has given to them that useful power of accommodation to circumstances which compensates for many external disadvantages, and it is only by injudicious management that it is lost. Give him but a moderate portion of food and kindness, and the peasant's child is happier than the duke's; free from artificial wants, unsatiated by indulgence, all nature ministers to his pleasure; he can carve out felicity from a bit of hazel twig, or fish for it successfully in a puddle. I love to hear the boisterous joy of a troop of ragged urchins, whose cheap playthings are nothing more than mud, snow, sticks, or oyster-shells; or to watch the quiet enjoyment of a half-clothed, half-washed fellow of four or five years old, who sits, with a large, rusty knife, and a lump of bread and bacon, at his father's door, that might move the envy of an alderman.” Childhood often holds a truth with its feeble fingers, which the grasp of manhood cannot retain, which it is the pride of utmost age to recover. Douglas Jerrold says: "Blessed be the hand that prepares a pleasure for a child, for there is no saying when and where it may bloom forth. Does not almost everybody remember some kind-hearted man who showed him a kindness in the days of his childhood ?" "Once on a time, when sunny May Was kissing up the April showers, And smiling who would choose but love him? Was the gay heaven that laughed above him. After childhood comes boyhood; and as no better definition can be furnished of this notorious and never *Sir E. Bulwer Lytton. to-be-forgotten class, we subjoin the humorous lines of jood: "The proper study of mankind is man The most perplexing one, no doubt, is woman; "But of all studies in the round of learning, "If to ask questions that would puzzle Plato, "If the possession of a teeming fancy— (Although, forsooth, the youngster doesn't know it), Which he can use in rarest necromancy, Be thought poetical, your boy's a poet! "If a strong will and most courageous bearing; "But changing soon with his increasing stature, Loud and popular are the complaints alleged against boys, by mothers and sisters, on account of their aggressive acts and misdemeanors; but as it is not our province to impeach them, we rather present the following plea in their behalf: "It has cost the world ages of experience to earn an appreciation of the position and character of woman, and we have not yet attained to a knowledge of the true position, requirements, and character of the child. One reason for this ignorance may be due to the fact, that the study of the condition of childhood requires the mind to turn back upon itself, and observe its own motions, a mental process contrary to the habits of nature. Look at the manifold different systems of education. One might suppose that the mind of the child was made for curious experiments, to find by what variety of place, or by what clipping and coaxing, it might be brought to assume a certain style of growth, without ever being suffered to put forth the laws of its own nature. We cannot but look upon that class of beings stigmatized by the term boys with some lively touch of pity. Particularly when transplanted from the soil where they were born, and placed under foreign influences, are they deserving of this humane sentiment. Would any man who has passed a moderately comfortable life be willing to live over the decade between his fifth and fifteenth year? Does any one feel a response in his heart to that lyrical wish, now popularized by the street organ, to be a boy again? The truth is, that the boy, as regards his conception of his own nature and its due education, is in advance of his age. He is not understood, or is misunderstood. We arrogantly put him into that class which Sir William Blackstone denominates feræ naturæ, and base our plans for his improvement upon the assumption of his total depravity. He has ambition which burns out in disappointment; he has dreams of heroism and love which he dares not confide to another; he has keen sensibilities which his elders do not forbear to taunt or to disregard; he has an understanding of matters whereof he is assumed to be absurdly ignorant; he has aching doubts about life and death which he knows not where to satisfy. Often, like one who wanders in the dark, his undeveloped reason and half-knowledge fail to guide him through the night into which his more mature fancy hurries him, and he stumbles over chasms, or starts at those awful phantoms of the brain which the firmness of riper intellect cannot at all times exercise. The loneliness of night, the mystery of the heavens, the sadness of good bye, fill his imagination and grasp his whole soul with a power which lessens as he advances in years. Like young Albano, in Jean Paul's delectable romance of Titan,' he has to restrain and hide within himself all his emotions, his longings, his precious thoughts, for fear of some stern father or some domesticated Diogenes; or, if he ventures to unbosom himself to an imagined friend of his own age, asking only for the bread of sympathy which his heart craves, it is but to find himself possessed of the scorpion of treachery and neglect, and, perhaps, at last he flies to the beauty of some amiable girl, whom his ardent enthusiasm clothes with every grace and every virtue, who smiles upon him and comprehends him no more than he comprehends the ocean.” * *North American Review. |