and when some one found him left alone, and cried out that it was unfair, he would not hear of such a thing, but said, "Oh, pa! you know I'm too young to go to a concert." Once his companions all went to a review of yeomanry. It was quite an event for that neighbourhood, as the corps actually mustered some fifteen men, all known well in the village, though not as yet noted for military glory. But that did not matter much. Well, he, little mite, if he went at all, and how foolish for him to want to go! must even walk on his two feet with his good young lady governess, for she could not mount a horse like the others. So they set off together, humbly and lovingly. Arrived at four ways, where a finger-post stood for directing travellers, she could not read English, and he was no great dab at letters himself. However, putting their heads together, they managed to hit on the right road, and they even reached the ground only a few minutes after the proud mounted troop cantered up to it. Little John could not endure to hear himself praised. About a month before his death, hearing a certain person for once in the way of superstition off his guard, say to a friend who came to see them, that there was a boy who had never been known to commit the slightest fault, hung down his head and stole aside, seeming to be quite put out. His eldest brother had lately attained an object of his high ambition-a dog-cart. John would look wistfully, almost respectfully at it; he would lend a hand, such as it was, to pull it out of the shed; he would mount into it before the real horse came, for his tall brother would turn horse for him in the shafts a moment; he would gaze admiringly when, after a space, brother and his groom issued forth to set at work in right earnest; and though there was then but one nag, the tandem being reserved for state occasions, every thing was so magnified and multiplied in his eyes, that you might have thought he was applying to it the Homeric lines Καρπαλίμως δ ̓ ἔζευξαν ὕφ ̓ ἅρμασιν ὠκέας ἵππους· But, for an actual "ride" in it, that was altogether another thing. He was, however, dying to have one. Some very officious person having asked him, "Why does not he invite you?" "Oh!" he replied, "what should he take a poor little chap VOL. II. N like me for?" and then he could not help laughing heartily at what he had himself said. In truth, I believe he would have admitted at once the right of his brother, if, like De Quincey's, the other had assumed it, of having "twice in a year his foot placed on his own neck, in token of the eternal deference he owed to one so much older than himself, so much wiser, stronger, braver, more beautiful, and more swift of foot *." The fact was, he was so humble, that he thought himself nothing. A few days before his death, on his return after being on the box of a hired fly, which answered him just as well as if it had been his greatgrandfather's coach and six, he said to his little sister, “I like that coachman very much; but he had no business to say to Nomm that I seemed full of thought." All this is very puerile, you say. Well, be it so. Some, however, will like to hear a little more of it, for "Soft is the music that would charm for ever; “Bashfulness, another damsel of that gentle crew," might be obtained from the bower as a graceful companion of later years. In the world she is soon put to flight. "Shame's a baby," says its adept. Little John, though he would not have let you call him a baby, had certainly his share of it. He was somewhat afraid of accosting well-dressed strangers; and as for another telling them any thing in his own praise, he would say, in Shakspearian style, to the more courageous May, for touching that chord, "Is there no time or hole and corner to whistle off these secrets, but you must be tittle-tattling before all our guests?" This spirit belonged not only to little John, but even to his gay, joyous brother, who in that respect resembled Chaucer's knight: "And of his port as meke as is a mayde, In all his lyf unto no maner wight." A little thing in the way of commendation would draw the blood into his cheek; and he used to express surprise how any * Autob. i. † Wordsworth. soldier could differ from Turenne, who, on his return from glorious campaigns, used to fly from applause, and fear even to appear before the king, lest he should be praised by him in presence of the court. He would always turn off the conversation from any thing that reflected credit on himself, and he had ever a fine action of some one else ready to relate, in order to shut people's mouths about what he had himself done. This youth was so far from self-conceit, that he who took most interest in him had to reverse the general, rule, and try to inspire him with a better opinion of his own qualities than he had himself. He could never succeed in this policy, though the other would smile, as much as to say, Thank you; but it was plain enough that his self-slight was too deeply rooted to yield to any commendation. Of no one else he ever was heard to speak slightingly, though, like many others of his age, he was not without experience of that character which knows how to unite authority with a sarcastic vein. Its ridicule, levelled at him with the best of intentions, wounded those who heard it; but as for himself, though it certainly helped to confirm him in an unjust depreciation of his own qualities, he took it all as it was meant, good-naturedly and in the best part, as if he thought, what was not exactly true, that it was not a little misapplied. It never was able to shake him out of his saddle, so firm was his seat in the conscious nobleness of his nature. If the subject of conversation with his elders was at all grave, he would only permit himself to throw out a suggestion, and it was generally the best that could be offered. In questions of art he was as diffident as if he had not the talent which he possessed of knowing what was best. "I am no judge, of course," he would say; "but the picture that moves me most in the National Gallery is that of Christ stretched out dead, and his mother mourning over Him,"-alluding to the painting by Francia. His manner of expressing his own thoughts was to begin with "Don't you think so and so?" or "Used you not to say always?" or "It puts me in mind of what you used to say.' Never did a magisterial sentence escape his teeth. Though never pretending it to be the result of "too much thinking," he loved to have " commo mon thoughts." His deep humility made him distrust his own judgment, excepting when it was a question 99 of defending the character of an absent person, and then he knew better than every one else present. He never resented being rated or taxed with childish levity and ignorance; but he seemed only to love and respect the more him who used to say how it seemed only yesterday that he had carried him, for all his present tall joints, in his arms, dressed so smartly in white, with delicate fine hat, and most courteous feathers, which bowed the head, and nodded at all the poor women who used in passing to bless his pretty face, and how he had trained him up and watched over him rurðòv šóvra. Then the lad would laugh and recall some of his own childish pranks. A few hours before his death, that sorrowful friend kissed his poor hand. "Why do you do that?" he asked, withdrawing it hastily; and for the first time in his life looked at him displeased. It was the same feeling that inspired Louis Beauvais, the student of St. Acheul, when dying; for he would not through humility kiss the image of our Saviour on the cross, but only the wood of the cross *. But we must pass on. From this humility of early life it is clear that manhood and age have to learn much that would do them good. That spirit entered, no doubt, into those bonds of affinity, which we before observed as assimilating youth to ancient Christianity. Men can learn from it, therefore, the most important of all lessons, a social as well as an intellectual and moral acquiescence in the Divine economy, which prepares them, by obedience to authority, for the happiness of the future life. But as that lesson has been previously delivered in connexion with other qualities of childhood and youth, we must not recur to it. Let us proceed to remark, as well as we can, the lessons of general wisdom which can be supplied in the Children's Bower, and which every one who is not a sophist professed may be competent to appreciate. *Souvenirs de St. Acheul. CHAPTER XVIII. N oak copse, in which, if you shut your eyes, you can actually lose yourself a thick tangled wood, the ground all spangled with blue, and pink, and yellow flowers, to which no one here, I suspect, has the smallest chance of being able to give the right names-with a little brook winding and bubbling on through it, so narrow, that even Jack can jump over, though his guardian can't for the life of her-with the thrush and the nightingale singing on the sprays all round you-such is the place that at this pass receives our company, who are, for the nonce, as Arcadian in their tastes as if they called each other Tityrus and Melibus. At this moment they will all agree in saying, at least in the vernacular, "Nobis placeant ante omnia silvæ." "Beneath the verdurous canopy, how sweet What constellations of little shining flowers at our feet! Botanists tell us that nature seems to have been more solicitous to ensure the safety of the least considerable plants than of more stately vegetable productions. Alas! she seems less careful of you, little Jack, than of a tuft of moss. But then you are to revive elsewhere, you know; your bloom will be for ever; while may be left to us to recall your image by seeing these coy forget-me-nots, as we ramble later through a wilderness like this, alone. it But a truce to such prophetic thoughts. We have, besides, at present, something else to do besides praising the woods. So let us attend. A proposition is here suggested by the subject of the last chapter, though many sagacious critics now-a-days * H. I. J. |