age, and in particular like La Fleur, all the dispositions in the world. It is enough for heaven, as Sterne says, and ought to be enough for you. However, we admit the imperfection; but there is another side to the medal; for youth's sense of duty is identical with discretion of the right sort. Men will often lose that sense, and then I should like to know what their discretion amounts to? Men are then like great babies, minus all discretion; they must be coaxed, flattered, humoured, otherwise they grow sulky; they won't work; they won't eat; they won't see how their own interest is compromised by any thing they resolve on doing; how the happiness of others is disturbed. Perhaps they grow furious, and slay their best friend, the wife of their bosom, as they would an ox at the manger, ὥς τίς τε κατέκτανε βοῦν ἐπὶ φάτνη. Men, without inspiration from the Children's Bower, will often grow jealous, suspicious, self-tormentors, and tormentors of all around them. They have to be sorry for it; though, even while lamenting, they can't see how much they might have learnt from the young; so they cry with Polonius, 66 Beshrew my jealousy! It seems, it is as proper to our age To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions, Men are aware of the force of temptation, and they run to expose themselves to it. Children know it not; but discretion, acting through obedience, keeps them at a distance from it. They hear it said, Strange that flowers of earth Are visited by every air that stirs, And drink in sweetness only, while the child, May take a blemish from the breath of love, This is enough for them. They ask no more questions, and * Willis. submit to the required discipline, content to know, with Overbury, "He comes too neere, that comes to be denide." Oh, how often was it said secretly of the youngest of the two we mourn for, "I fear thy gentle loveliness, Oh, how often was it said audibly to his eldest brother, "O thou child of many prayers! Life hath quicksands! life hath snares! Well, what was the result in the latter instance? For in the former, unless death may be regarded as supplying the answer, which I am far from thinking, there was not time to learn it. It was an obedience to what was imposed. It was an occasion for discretion which, amidst the buoyancy and impetuosity of youth, might have shamed manhood and old age. It was a verifying of the poet's lines "Youth's fortunate feeling doth seize easily Even in the lower and more ordinary sense of the term the discretion of childhood might be proposed men for imitation. The wise way in which little John used sometimes to correct or admonish the elder brother nearest in age to himself would strike every one. Many a time it might have recalled the scene where little York begs his uncle's dagger, and his brother, the prince, exclaims, "A beggar, brother?" and when, on the other continuing with pert replies, he says, "My lord of York will still be cross in talk; Once in the court-yard, where he loved to dabble about, bobbing around, he heard two of the men disputing as to whose * Longfellow. + Wallenstein. business it was to announce a poor beggar who was standing at the back door. John heard them in silence for a while, only looking at them stedfastly, as if puzzled at the phenomenon. At last he said, smiling, "Come, I'll go and do it, though while you two are there, perhaps it's not my business." Like other children, too, he would correct and admonish people in fault by his countenance, and that without a frown, but with a look that spoke to the heart more than the best orator,-" per tristitiam vultus corrigitur animus delinquentis." If he heard of a fault, he looked sad and anxious, that was all, and that was enough. Gabriel de Vaufleury was so remarkable for discretion, we are told, that no one ever had any secrets to conceal from him. People used to tell him every thing. "I should never have thought," he said to one of his aunts, "that so much confidence would be placed in a boy like me." "I know more secrets than you do," John used say to his little sister; "I hear them when I am being dressed, when Nomm and Anne are talking." The fact was that there was no occasion to conceal any thing from him. Never would he repeat any thing that could in the smallest way cause pain to another or a breach of charity. His discretion certainly was great. When told not to mention any thing, after a conversation in his presence, he used to shake or nod his head in silent token of resolution, or say, "All right;" and he never betrayed the secret. It was not he that would by indiscreet talking ever bring you into trouble, or into collision with others. Had grown-up people, then, nothing to learn from this child of eight years, think you? The Père Lebrun speaks of a boy, Ubaldinus, who, if ever he perceived any of his associates displeased or angry with some one, would go round about in a prudent mild way, and bring him to forgive all that had offended him †. Such discretion saints would imitate. But now we ought to take rest a little; for a lesson of graver importance must be attended to at our next sitting. The faint gray tint I lately spoke of as long preceding night is slowly coming on. *Souvenirs de St. Acheul. Instit. Juventutis Christianæ. CHAPTER XVII. Can E have not this time to proceed far to find the bower. It is placed between some high laurels and laurestinas which front the house close to the door; but why it is placed there is not so obvious. The reason, however, is simply that there is before it a patch of ground which may be dug and turned up as often as the children like; and so every morning, as true as the clock, will our little Jack be found there spade in hand, and, as Gray would say, envying him, " dirty and amused," very intent on what he is about, but not less free to entertain you with any talk that you may please to have with him, though it were only to complain, like the same poet, that you can be never "either dirty or amused as long as you live." Well, then, the toil of this little labourer before us can suggest the subject of our next discussion. It is a great lesson, no where, perhaps, delivered with such practical efficacy as in the Children's Bower, which teaches us to renounce, not in a way of commonplace parlance, which is all nothing or worse than nothing, but really and actually, pride, and to cultivate the quality that is opposed to it,—a rare principle, and with much labour learned in wisdom's school. Of this instruction no one can exaggerate the importance wherever it is obtained; and we shall see proof in the sequel that it can be had here. "I shall be pure and exempt from the great crime *," said David. "What is this great crime? I will say," adds St. Augustin, "what I think. This great crime, my opinion, is pride,-pride which caused the fall of the angel, and made him a demon, and caused him to lose heaven for ever. This is the great crime, which is the cause of all other sins. This it is which prevents the great of the world from tasting the Christian humility, and from embracing the yoke of Christ. They *Ps. xviii. want to be independent, to have no master; but in refusing to submit to God, they only reject a good master. Serve they must, and so they undergo the heavy yoke of sin; for he who refuses to be the slave of charity, becomes the slave of iniquity *." St. Gregory says, that the most evident sign of reprobation is pride, and of election, humility,—“ evidentissimum reproborum signum superbia est, at contra humilitas, electorum." Man, say the ancients, is called, from the ground,-"homo ab humo ;" by which name it is wisely provided that he should have an occasion of humbling himself, and of avoiding vainglory. "Res homo vana; placet? Sordebit. Abundat? Egebit. The child finds a lesson of humility at every turn appropriate to his capacity. Every thing is mysterious to him. "A rapid multitude of questions," says a great theologian, “rush upon the mind; yet he is silent, as if he needed not an answer to any of them. They are beyond answering; and he feels that the sight itself satisfies him better than any answer. To him the questions are not difficulties. Either they answer themselves, or they do not need an answer ‡." This is true of the young even in regard to the natural world. Look at the children seated, as they often are perhaps, close to a bed of nettles. The sting of that plant is so constructed as to fill scientific observers with wonder. The child or youth only knows what it can do to him; but what use it is of he knows no more than his heels. He never asks what end it answers in creation. He no more tries to explain it than he would seek a scientific apology for the waters of the Deluge. The young have an instinct of humility, which teaches them, without the labour of finding it out by study, that we live amongst riddles and mysteries; that the most obvious things which come in our way have dark sides, which the quickest sight cannot penetrate into; and from this general appreciation of almost every cranny of nature's works, they are prepared to find themselves puzzled, and at a loss in * In Ps, xviii. + S. Melit. Clavis, de Homine. |