CHILDHOOD. I HAVE just been observing several children of eight or ten years old, in all the active vivacity which enjoys the plenitude of the moment without 'looking before or after;' and while observing, I attempted, but without success, to recollect what I was at that age. I can indeed remember the principal events of the period, and the actions and projects to which my feelings impelled me; but the feelings themselves, in their own pure juvenility, cannot be revived, so as to be described and placed in comparison with those of maturity. What has become of those vernal fancies which had so much power to touch the heart? What a number of sentiments have lived and revelled in the soul that are now irrevocably gone! They died, like the singing-birds of that time, which now sing no more. Foster, Essays. CHILDHOOD. THE child was on the best terms with the trees. He greeted them as good friends, and their rustling seemed an answer to his joyous greeting. He whistled like a finch, and all around us the twittering and piping of birds of all kinds replied. Then suddenly, before I could divine his purpose, he sprang away with his bundle of brushwood into the thicket. Children, I thought, are younger than we are; and perhaps they still remember how they once were birds and trees, so that they have not yet lost their power of communication with them. But we miserable men are very old, and have our heads full of cares, and jurisprudence, and bad verses, and Nature will have nothing to do with us. Heine, Reisebilder. CHILDHOOD RECALLED BY MUSIC. THIS Ranz des Vaches at once awaked his blooming Childhood, and she arose out of the morning dew, and out of her bower of rosebuds and slumbering flowers, and stepped before him in heavenly beauty, and smiled innocently and with her thousand hopes upon him, and said, 'Look at me, how beautiful I am! We used to play together. I formerly gave thee many things-great riches, gay meadows, and bright gold, and a beautiful long paradise behind the mountains; but now thou hast nothing of all this left—and how · pale thou art! O play with me again!' Before which of us has not childhood been a thousand times called up by music? And to which of us has she not spoken and asked 'Are the rosebuds which I gave thee not yet blown?' Alas! blown, indeed, they are-but they are pale white roses. Richter. CHILDREN. I HOLD it a religious duty To love and worship children's beauty; But with a beatific passion. Campbell, Lines on my new Child-Sweetheart CHILDREN. I HAVE observed an unusual sweetness of temper in children. Nature usually makes a very obliging discovery of herself in them. They throw themselves with entire confidence upon conversation. They act without artifice or disguise, and believe others as kind and undesigning as themselves; but when they once understand what a sort of world they are come into, when they find that easiness of belief betrays them, and that they are losers by the openness of their carriage, then they begin to be upon their guard, to grow cautious and reserved, and to stand off in jealousy and suspicion. Like birds that are shot at, Nature grows wild by usage, and neither loves, nor trusts, so much as before. Jeremy Collier. CHILDREN. CHILDREN, like dogs, have so sharp and fine a scent, that they detect and hunt out everything,-the bad before all the rest. They also know well enough how this or that friend stands with their parents; and as they practise no dissimulation whatever, they serve as excellent barometers by which to observe the degree of favour or disfavour at which we stand with their parents. CHILDREN. Goethe. No man can tell but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents make a man's heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges; their childishness, their stammering, their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society. Jeremy Taylor, Sermon, The Marriage Ring. CHARITY SCHOOL CHILDREN. THERE was no part of the show on the Thanksgiving Day that so much pleased and affected me as the little boys and girls who were ranged with so much order and decency in that part of the Strand which reaches from the May-pole to Exeter Change. Such a numerous and innocent multitude, clothed in the charity of their benefactors, was a spectacle pleasing both to God and man, and a more beautiful expression of joy and thanksgiving than could have been exhibited by all the pomps of a Roman triumph. Never did a more full and unspotted chorus of human creatures join together in a hymn of devotion. The care and tenderness which appeared in the looks of their several instructors, who were disposed among this little helpless people, could not forbear touching every heart that had any sentiments of humanity. Addison, Guardian, No. 105. (1713.) CHARITY SCHOOL CHILDREN. 'Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, The children walking two and two, in red, and blue, and green; Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow, Till into the high dome of Paul's, they like Thames' waters flow. O what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town! Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own : The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs, Thousands of little boys and girls, raising their innocent hands. Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song, Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among : Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor; Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door. E William Blake. CHILDREN DANCING. How ye smile, how ye hop, flowery genii, scarce descended from your clouds ! The artificial dance, and false notions encumber you not, and ye jump over all rules. How-Time enters and touches them-Tall men and women stand there-The little dance is benumbed, they rise to depart, and gravely they look into each others' heavy countenances. No, no, play on children, continue only your antic gambols in your dream-it was but a dream of mine. Richter. JOYOUSNESS IN CHILDREN. How should it be otherwise? I can bear a melancholy man, but never a melancholy child. Into whatever quagmire the former sinks, he may raise his eyes either to the realms of reason or to that of hope; but the little child sinks and perishes in a single black poison-drop of the present time.Only imagine a child conducted to the scaffold-Cupid in a German coffin-or fancy a butterfly crawling like a caterpillar with his four wings pulled off, and you will feel what I mean. Richter. CHIVALRY. O, GOODLY usage of those antique times, Spenser, Faerie Queene, b. iii. c. i. st. 13. |