never would go to take the recreation of the chace without hearing mass. One day, the horse he drove falling and disabling himself for ever, “Ah!” said he to his brother, who was with him, "I ought to have done what I omitted this morning!" The gay troubadour, the delight of all societies, he whose only fault was to be too impressionable to the manner of those around him,-in his lightest moments, when he even affected to talk like the people, and loved to repeat their quaint, homely, and goodhumoured terms, never countenanced a word unholy or impure, or impertinent or disparaging of another. No one ever heard from his lips, what Homer would call væɛρpíaλov πоç. There is one who sometimes used to regard him with secret surprise, when observing with what imperturbable respect and genuine good feeling he always spoke to priests, though there might be occasion at the moment for a little merriment at some uncalledfor and unseasonable censure by an old man and learned, a foreigner and a stranger to the ways and necessities of modern life in England.

But let us take other examples, where there was a more free and expansive development of what he possibly, though I do not think it, tried too much to conceal.

The director of Planche and of Calixte Frèze, said, "I used to regard them with a kind of admiration and respect, and I may add, confusion; for I used to envy their innocence and their fervour *.' There are, in fact, examples of piety in children, "remembering their Creator in the days of their youth," that one cannot recall without a deep and affecting interest. Little John furnished one of them. "Cum adhuc esset puer cœpit quærere Deum patris sui." Without many of the resources to nourish piety which these French children possessed, he was in every respect like one of the angelic students described in the book entitled "Souvenirs de St. Acheul:"

"Thus had his moder her litel child i-taught
Our blissful lady, Cristes moder deere,
To worschip ay, and he forgat it nought,
For holy child will alway soone leere."

* Souvenirs de St. Acheul.

From his birth offered, as it were, to be a child of that blessed Mother of us all, he, though so young, to Christ did reverence, and cherished her with all the tenderness of a real son.

"Her hymns and litanies he learnt by rote,
And them he song both well and boldely;
Oft on the day they passed through his throte,
From word to word accordyng with the note."

Whether he walked, or sat, or rode,

"This litel child as he cam to and fro,
Ful merily than wold he synge and crie,
'O alma redemptoris, evermo ;'

The swetness had his herte pined so

Of Cristes moder, that to hir to pray,
He cannot stynt of synging by the way."

Thus along with all the buoyant sports of a strong and lively constitution, piety stamped every action of his short life. There is a person who will never forget one moment when he saw him kneeling before the altar, at the last benediction at which he ever assisted. Let us pause here a moment. What I am about to mention is interesting, at least, for its truth, and for its recalling what we read of the Emperor Maximilian, who did not dare to look at St. Lucianus, the modest piety of whose countenance and demeanour used to convert pagans. I know not whether the impression I speak of was produced by the same causes, but I am acquainted with one, who at that moment did not dare to look at this child of eight years kneeling to God, and bowed down before his altar. It was a few Sundays before his death; and it was the last time, as I have said, that he ever assisted at that beautiful office, for he was removed next day to a place where no functions besides mass were then celebrated. This person, I repeat it, beheld him with his little head bowed down, and forehead resting on the rail, so innocently, so devoutly praying, that the sight overcame him; and as if his eyes were not worthy to sustain the vision of such pure innocence, instinctively he turned aside his face, and even, if all must be known, his thoughts with it.

"O God! if souls unsoil'd as these
Need daily mercy from thy throne;
If he upon his bended knees,
Our loveliest and our purest one;
He, with a face so clear and bright
We deem him some stray child of light;
If he, with those soft eyes in tears,

Day after day in his first years,
Must kneel and pray for grace from Thee;
What far, far deeper need have we * ?"

"I know a person," says Gerson, "who is accustomed to get innocent boys to pray for him t." Whether he meant himself or another, I know not; but no one need wonder at such a practice being suggested either to a saint or to a sinner. It is related of the great Alburquerque, that in a fearful storm when his fleet was in danger of perishing, he seized a child, and holding him up in his arms, presented him, as it were, to God, invoking mercy for his people. It is added, that the storm ceased, and that all present ascribed their deliverance to that action. But we must close this chapter.

"Quæ mens est hodiè, cur eadem non puero fuit?” Say rather, Would that I had still retained, or grant that I may yet recover, the mind of my youth!

* Willis.

CHAPTER XII.

DEN itself for sixpence to non-subscribers! Well, I never! what immortal foliage! what slopes! what flowers! and the blue winding lake or river, I know not which it is, with its wooded islands for Robinson Crusoe's ducks, and its peninsulas so beautiful with shrubs of every tint of green; and then this sudden ex

+ De Mendicitate spirituali.

Hor. Od. iv. 9.

hibition of life, in shapes to which we are unaccustomed, revealing to us the ever renewing vitality of all things; the curious birds, and the wonderful beasts; and the strange screams, and groans, and moans, and roars; and the warbling, and the singing, and the chirping, and the chattering; and the bill-rapping of such a marvellous creation, and no human creatures, I do believe, in it to-day but ourselves; an a bower in every corner; and to suit our hereditary propensities, for which mother Eve must answer, the dangerous swings and giant strides! Well, here I suppose you certainly intend to stop awhile, so I may depend on you for a long sitting.

It is amusing to remark the sort of estimate formed of children's capacities, and of the character of the youthful mind in general, by those persons who substitute book learning for common thought and personal observation of life around them. Women and children and the poor, the three divisions of the human race that Christianity had a mission to glorify, are precisely the three classes of their fellow-creatures that they secretly, at least, and practically most despise.

We have already seen enough to enable us to convict them of injustice with respect to their appreciation of children, whom they regard as only capable of being moved by toys or what they call scientific games; and we are about now to witness further proof of it; though, on the other hand, I am not going to ascribe to the young people before us any thing unsuitable to their years, or follow in that respect the example of Spenser, who, after beginning one of his pastorals with

"Diggon Davie, I bid her good day,
Or, Diggon her is, or I missay,"

proceeds to show these refined shepherds met together to discuss dogmatical theology, and to complain of errors in the government of the Church; for choosing which subjects, so little appropriate to his speakers, Johnson justly censures him.

"Omnia divina et humana jura," says St. Augustin, “permittunt quærere catholicam fidem." Stranger, don't look displeased. What forbids us to institute this inquiry as we sit in the Children's Bower? Men in these days are fond

enough of looking at the ancient religion of Christendom, when considering in what relation governments and anarchies, kings and ministers, philosophers and men of letters, are supposed to stand to it; and they do this, in order that they may estimate its character by what they imagine to be its influence on all these classes. Why should not others sometimes take a hint from them, and consider children in regard to it? Their affinity with it, in a countless number of instances, considering what some of our philosophers fancy it to be, is, to say the least, very remarkable. Their affection for it in almost every individual case, when it is presented to their observation, after hearing it represented as something so monstrous, deserves our notice; for, in point of fact, we find that its action upon their intelligence and hearts is like that of the material light on plants, which influences not only their colour, but determines the bending of their stems and flowers. Why should we not transfer to this order of thought the principle of the philosopher, to set out from observation, to generalize afterwards the phenomena, and erect them into law; or, the circumstances which determine a phenomenon being defined, to assign to that law all the particularities which result from it? In the world even, some have endeavoured to show, may be learned the lesson, that what many like least within this order of considerations, is really the bourn to which common thoughts would of themselves lead men. It will startle some persons, if it should turn out that in the Children's Bower we may learn that the very same thing, be it what it will, is in greatest harmony with the affections, thoughts, instincts, and natural manners of those, whom philosophers themselves profess to admire, and of whom we are expressly told by a voice which all Christians bow to, "that of such is the kingdom of heaven." This fact to them would be ten times strange; but it will be found as true as it is strange; nay, as Isabella says, "it is ten times true; for truth is truth to the end of reckoning."

But why, they will demand, drag in such a theme to so sweet and tranquil a spot? Rather than harp on that string they will say, Break up the bower, and let its members roam elsewhere. Ay, just so. They are like the old men that Plato describes, who came to interrupt the conversation with Lysis, calling to