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utterly unknown to both the Testaments."†

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his pencil children retained their playground | gel-wings, and wake out of his dream to clothes, and preserved their playground oc- put on rags and loathe them; and thus will cupations, and appeared at the best, and in he grow up in a sour discontent with that homely realism, what Wordsworth calls 'state of life to which it has pleased God to call him.'"* The Rev. Llewellyn Da"Sound healthy children of the God of heaven." vies, in a review of the Revivals of 1859, The style and effect of Mrs. Pardiggle's of which visitations children were the subsystem of home education are depicted by ject, equally with their elders, refers to this Mr. Dickens with a high-coloured brush. fact as one peculiarly shocking to English She is made to introduce to us her five Christians, at least to Churchmen and boys: Egbert, aged twelve, as the boy who Churchwomen. At an incredibly tender sent out his pocket-money to the amount of age they, poor things, are made convicts,' five-and-three-pence, to the Tockahoopo arrive at peace,' and afterwards become Indians; Oswald (ten and a half), as the leaders of prayer and exhortation." In the child who contributed two-and-nine-pence to Scriptures, he goes on to affirm, you will as the Great National Smither's Testimonial; soon find cases of little children "convictFrancis (nine), one-and-sixpence-half-pen- ed" of sin, as you will cases of grown, perny; Felix (seven), eightpence to the super-sons thrown into epileptic convulsions by annuated Widows, while Alfred, the young- receiving the Gospel. "These things are est (five), has voluntarily enrolled himself in the Infant Bonds of Joy, and is pledged But to recur to the Pardiggle progeny. never, through life, to use tobacco in any Never were seen such dissatisfied children form.* Young "Bands of Hope," by the -not merely weazen and shrivelled, but way, were of ill odour in the nostrils of a looking absolutely ferocious with discontent. late clerical essayist, pithy and pungent of The face of each child, as the amount of pen, the Rev. John Eagles-so well and his contribution was mentioned, darkened widely known as the "Sketcher" of Black-in a peculiarly vindictive manner," except, wood's Magazine. In reviewing the "Re- however, the little recruit into the Infant ports" of Temperance and Teetotal Socie- Bonds of Joy, who was stolidly and evenly ties, he lamented the constant display-pro- miserable. "My young family are not cessions of children with banners, walking frivolous," Mrs. Pardiggle remarks; "they through crowded thoroughfares with music before them, assuming all the consequence of their position, as the "observed of all observers," drinking in excitement and selfapprobation with the very air they breathe little paragons of all that is good, satisfied only when they attract all eyes to them. What, he asks, is the natural tendency? They must either believe that they have been converted into little angels on earth, or believe it not; in either case they are the worse. Their natures will rebel-will tell them they are acting a lie. They must be fed with excitement, than which nothing There have been, unquestionably, many is more dangerous to young persons." very interesting children who, as Dr. Holmes another place the same plain country parson remarks, have shown a wonderful indifferstands up for the old-fashioned Church Cate-ence to the things of earth, and an extraorchism, with its plain answers to plain ques-dinary development of the spiritual nature. tions, as far better for the instruction of Probably he would give Swedenborg a place children of the poor at least than among them. Of Bishop Svedberg's famihymns which lift up the little souls far ly of nine all but one were, we read, like above their ordering themselves lowly and himself and his wife, "Sunday children," a reverently. Such holy children' as Mr. recognized augury of the godliness of his Smithies has described to us are not likely house. Emanuel Swedenborg is not the to acknowledge any to be their betters.' exception out of the nine. And as a reNow-a-days a child is not allowed to think viewer of his life remarks, to judge from as a child. He must have strong meats' Swedenborg's recollections in his old age, when he should have milk for babes.' He his childhood was one of precocious piety: must have visions of angel-robes and an- from his fourth to his tenth year his thoughts * Temperance and Teetotal Societies,' ibid. p.210. ↑ Macmillan,' i. 372.

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* Bleak House,' ch. viii.

6

Essays by the Rev. John Eagles,' p. 201.

In

expend the entire amount of their allowances in subscriptions under my direction; and they have attended as many public meetings, and listened to as many lectures, orations, and discussions as generally fall to the lot of few grown people." She adds, with peculiar complacency, that Alfred (five) - the one who had, of his own election, joined the Infant Bonds of Joy- -was one of the very few children who manifested consciousness on that occasion, after a fervid address of two hours from the chairman of the evening.

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sees indeed one of the most beautiful in-
stances of the principle of compensation
which marks the Divine benevolence. "But
to get the spiritual hygiene of robust na-
tures out of the exceptional regimen of in-
valids is just simply what we professors call
bad practice,' and I know by experience
that there are worthy people who not only
try it on their own children, but actually force
it on those of their neighbours." 'Do chil-
dren die so often and so good in your
parts?" asks Charles Lamb of Bernard
Barton,* by way of gentle objection to the
gentle Quaker's over-elaboration of that
subject, in his volume of verses.
And cor-

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were constantly engrossed in "reflecting on God, on salvation, and on the spiritual affections of men." The things he revealed in his discourse so astonished his parents that they declared angels certainly spoke through his mouth. But it does not appear that Swedenborg carried his early pietism into his youth or early manhood."* Be that as it may, the biographies of these exceptionally devout children are recognized as identical in their essentials - the same "disinclination to the usual amusements of children," the same remarkable sensibility,† the same docility, the same conscientiousness; in short, what the Professor at the Breakfast-table designates an almost uni-dially would Elia, with his genuine depth of form character, marked by beautiful traits, feeling, and his shrewd sense and keen perwhich we look at with a painful admiration. ception, have assented to the American It will be found, he asserts, that most of professor's doctrine, that a time comes when these children are the subjects of some conwe have learned to understand the music of stitutional unfitness for living. And he ex- sorrow, the beauty of resigned suffering, presses his conviction that many healthy the holy light that plays over the pillow of children are injured morally by being forced those who die before their time, in humble to read too much about these little meek hope and trust; but that it is not until he has sufferers and their spiritual exercises; that worked his way through the period of hondisgust is implanted in the minds of many est hearty animal existence, which every robust youngsters by early surfeits of path- robust child should make the most of, -not ological piety. "I do verily believe that until he has learned the use of his various He who took children in in His arms and faculties, which is his first duty, that a blessed them, loved the healthiest and most boy of courage and animal vigour is in a playful of them just as well as those who proper state to read these tearful records of were richest in the tuberculous virtues." In premature decay.† the sensibility and the sanctity which often accompany premature decay, Dr. Holmes

Saturday Review,' xxiii. 603.

+ Schleiermacher, by the way, contends that children are incapable of true feeling; that what in them is called feeling is only utterance of instinct, by which, however, they themselves, as well as others, are led erroneously to believe that they possess real feeling. See Schleiermacher's Letters, vol. i. No. clxvi.

Remains,' p. 128.

"Now, when you put into such a hot-blooded, hard-fisted, round-cheeked little rogue's hand a sad-looking volume or pamphlet, with the portrait of a thin, white-faced child, whose life is really as much a training for death as the last month of a condemned criminal's existence, what does he find in common between his own overflowing and exulting sense of vitality and the experience of the doomed offspring of invalid parents?" 'The Professor at the Breakfast-table,' § viii.

ENDURANCE.

How much the heart may bear, and yet not break!

How much the flesh may suffer and not die ! I question much if any pain or ache

Of soul or body brings our end more nigh.
Death chooses his own time; till that is worn,
All evils may be borne.

We shrink and shudder at the surgeon's knife-
Each nerve recoiling from the cruel steel,
Whose edge seems searching for the quivering
life;

Yet to our sense the bitter pangs reveal
That still, although the trembling flesh be torn,
This, also, can be borne.

We see a sorrow rising in our way,

And try to flee from the approaching ill,
We seek some small escape-we weep and pray-

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JUST PUBLISHED AT THIS OFFICE :

OCCUPATIONS OF A RETIRED LIFE, by Edward GARRETT. Price 50 cents.
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PREPARING FOR PUBLICATION AT THIS OFFICE:

HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF THE REIGN OF GEORGE II. These very interesting and valuable sketches of Queen Caroline, Sir Robert Walpole, Lord Chesterfield, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Pope, and other celebrated characters of the time of George II., several of which have already appeared in the LIVING AGE, reprinted from Blackwood's Magazine, will be issued from this office, in book form, as soon as completed.

A HOUSE OF CARDS.

THE BRAMLEIGHS OF BISHOP'S FOLLY, by CHARLES LEVER.
PHINEAS FINN, THE IRISH MEMBER, by MR. TROLLOPE.

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY

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FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money.

Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 86 volumes, 90 dollars.

Second "

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The Complete Work,

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For 5 new subscribers ($40.), a sixth copy; or a set of HORNE'S INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE, unabridged, in 4 large volumes, cloth, price $10; or any 5 of the back volumes of the LIVING AGE, in numbers, price $10.

From The New York Evening Post.

"OLD LAURIGER."

THE most charming of college songs, both for tune and words, is the familiar "Lauriger Horatius." Mr. James A. Morgan, of New York, writes to the College Courant of Yale an interesting letter about it, of which the following is the substance:

"Can any of your correspondents tell me who was the author of that most widely known and admired of our college songs, Lauriger Horatius'? Also, of the origin of the tune, which our Southern brethren appropriated during the war, to their My Maryland'?

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"Whoever wrote it, had drunk in the true rolick of the Mantuan; for Flaccus himself never wrote sixteen lines that breathed more unmistakably his own abandon, than this little bumper of bonhommie, as sparkling and inspiriting as a glass of Sully's best. I have been told that in the terrible Wilderness an officer heard a little group of grimmed and blackened men, in a rifle-pit, singing Lauriger Horatius.' Near them were lying two of their wounded comrades, waiting for the surgeons who were long coming, in those sad days when brave men lay bleeding in every thicket. And these two wounded men- one of them, as it proved, past all human surgery were stoutly echoing the chorus they had so often shouted in merry rout and college frolic, when, poor fellows! they hardly dreamed their time, swifter than the tempest's breath,' was upon them. And I can well fancy that, like as in that group under the Redan,

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II.

"Crescit uva molliter Et puella crescit ; Sed poeta turpiter Sitiens, canescit. "Ubi sunt, &c.

III.

"Quid juvat aeternitas Nominis? amare Nisi terrae filias Licet, et potare. "Ubi sunt, &c."

The simple and beautiful air of Lauriger is just the thing for a campaign song. Will not some one of our Republican poets find lyric inspiration enough in the great political contest of 1868, for the safety of the government, and for peace, to give us words for it, which shall wed its sweet strains with the people's patriotic hopes and aspirations?

From The North British Review.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

THE institutions and social life of America would appear in some respects unfavourable to the production of any form of literary activity in which the imagination is principally concerned. There is a hardness and matter-of-fact quality alike about the types of character and the historical environments which the Western Continent presents to the writer's study and choice, while he himself is open to the same influences that tend to produce these general features of national life. There would seem, therefore, to be at once less favourable conditions for the generation of the idealistic faculty, on the one hand, and less material for its exercise, on the other. Notwithstanding this twofold operation of the practical and materialistic complexion of the life of that great nation, its literature is not without examples of conspicuous idealism. A country that can boast of three such contemporary authors as Emerson in Philosophy, Longfellow in Poetry, and Hawthorne in Pure Fiction, cannot be considered a barren or unhopeful soil for the cultivation of the richer fruits of the imagination.

is not on

called a part in the drama at all the busy stage, mingling in the throng by whom the movement is carried on and the plot worked out; but aside, as a spectator, sympathising with, yet critical of all, and recognising the hidden springs of the action and the influences, reaching from beyond the present and the visible, that sway the actors, with a far keener and more comprehensive sense than any of themselves. It could not be better expressed than in the words of Miles Coverdale, in reference to his own share of the transactions at Blithedale: "It resembles that of the chorus in a classic play, which seems to be set aloof from the possibility of personal concernment, and bestows the whole measure of its hope or fear, its exultation or sorrow, on the fortunes of others, between whom and itself this sympathy is the only bond." He is meditative, sympathetic, interpretative; too poised to be decisive; with an ear too justly open to the multitudinous voices within him, to become the clear and pronounced organ and advocate of any one. Hence at once a certain suggestiveness and reticence, a tendency to raise questions rather than to settle them, and a delicacy, almost diffidence of treatment, which by As a literary artist, and in respect of that some is felt to be most insinuating, by characteristic so difficult to analyse or de- others timid or tantalizing. There are dark fine, but to which common consent has as- and curious chambers within his conscioussigned the name Genius, it is questionable ness, which perhaps a want of firmness and whether, among the distinguished and re- courage, perhaps a wise humility, restrains markable men whom America has produced, him from too rashly investigating, but the there is any one of higher rank than Na- shadowy forms of which he often finds a thaniel Hawthorne — if, indeed, his equal. pleasing subdued awe in watching and He has no glittering brilliance to arrest vul- pointing out from a distance. gar notice, no high-pressure enthusiasm or mystery in every living thing, sweeping passion hurrying away with whirl- the mystery which profounder science diswind-power great and small that come with- covers underlying every operation of Nain its range, nor that rude muscular force ture, and of which that operation is but the that compels attention and often commands phenomenal result and expression, but a assent. He is calm, dreamy, subtle, with latent mystery which manifests itself often an imagination most penetrating, a refined with seeming caprice, yet ever normally, almost a fastidious taste; and in his finding its cause and sanction less in physihands the pen becomes a very magician's cal than in moral and spiritual forces and wand, “creating,” as he himself says, "the laws operating through the veil of sensible semblance of a world out of airy matter, things that overlie them. Endowed with a with the impalpable beauty of a soap-bubble." deep appreciation of the wonderful comHe is very far from being one of Carlyle's plexity of life, he sees minutely interlacing heroes he is eminently the man of con- tissues lost to grosser sense, and which templation- not of action. His part in sometimes, under unusual lights, present the drama of life—if it can be properly shifting and apparently unaccountable hues.

He sees a

not merely

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