CHAPTER CXXX.

CHILDREN AND KITTENS. APHORISMS ASCRIBED TO THE LAUREATE, DR. SOUTHEY. MORE COLUMBIAN PHILOSOPHY.

Oh! if in after life we could but gather
The very refuse of our youthful hours!
                                               CHARLES LLOYD.

O dear little children, you who are in the happiest season of human life, how will you delight in the Story of the Three Bears, when Mamma reads it to you out of this nice book, or Papa, or some fond Uncle, kind Aunt, or doting Sister! Papa and Uncle, will do the Great, Huge Bear, best; but Sister, and Aunt, and Mamma, will excel them in the Little, Small, Wee Bear, with his little, small, wee voice. And O Papa and Uncle, if you are like such a Father and such an Uncle as are at this moment in my mind's eye, how will you delight in it, both for the sake of that small, but “fit audience,” and because you will perceive how justly it may be said to be

                     —a well-writ story,
Where each word stands so well placed that it passes
Inquisitive detraction to correct.1

1 DAVENPORT.

It is said to be a saying of Dr. Southey's, that “a house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment, unless there is a child in it rising three years old, and a kitten rising six weeks.”

Observe, reader; this is repeated upon On-dit's authority, which is never to be taken for more than it is worth. I do not affirm that Dr. Southey has said this, but he is likely enough to have said it; for I know that he sometimes dates his letters from Cat's Eden. And if he did say so, I agree with him, and so did the Doctor; he specialiter as regards the child, I specialiter as regards the kitten.

Kitten is in the animal world what the rosebud is in the garden; the one the most beautiful of all young creatures, the other the loveliest of all opening flowers. The rose loses only something in delicacy by its developement,—enough to make it a serious emblem to a pensive mind; but if a cat could remember kittenhood, as we remember our youth, it were enough to break a cat's heart, even if it had nine times nine heart strings.

Do not the flowers spring fresh and gay,
Pleasant and sweet, in the month of May;
And when their time cometh they fade away.2

2 LUSTY JUVENTUS.

It is another saying of the Laureate's, according to On-dit, that, “live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life.” They appear so while they are passing; they seem to have been so when we look back upon them; and they take up more room in our memory than all the years that succeed them.

But in how strong a light has this been placed by the American teacher Jacob Abbott whose writings have obtained so wide a circulation in England. “Life, he says, if you understand by it the season of preparation for eternity, is more than half gone;—life so far as it presents opportunities and facilities for penitence and pardon,—so far as it bears on the formation of character, and is to be considered as a period of probation,—is unquestionably more than half gone, to those who are between fifteen and twenty. In a vast number of cases it is more than half gone, even in duration: and if we consider the thousand influences which crowd around the years of childhood and youth, winning us to religion, and making a surrender of ourselves to Jehovah easy and pleasant,—and, on the other hand, look forward beyond the years of maturity, and see these influences losing all their power, and the heart becoming harder and harder under the deadening effects of continuance in sin,—we shall not doubt a moment that the years of immaturity make a far more important part of our time of probation than all those that follow.”

That pious man, who, while he lived, was the Honourable Charles How, and might properly now be called the honoured, says, that, “twenty years might be deducted for education, from the three score and ten, which are the allotted sum of human life; this portion,” he observes, “is a time of discipline and restraint, and young people are never easy till they are got over it.”

There is, indeed, during those years, much of restraint, of wearisomeness, of hope, and of impatience; all which feelings lengthen the apparent duration of time. Suffering, I have not included here; but with a large portion of the human race, in all Christian countries, (to our shame be it spoken!) it makes a large item in the account: there is no other stage of life in which so much gratuitous suffering is endured,—so much that might have been spared,—so much that is a mere wanton, wicked addition, to the sum of human misery,—arising solely and directly from want of feeling in others, their obduracy, their caprice, their stupidity, their malignity, their cupidity and their cruelty.

Algunos sabios han dicho que para lo que el hombre tiene aprender es muy corta la vida; mas yo añado que es muy larga para los que hemos de padecer. “Some wise men,” writes Capmany, “have said that life is very short for what man has to learn,—but I (he says) must add, that it is very long for what we have to suffer.” Too surely this is but too true; and yet a more consolatory view may be taken of human existence. The shortest life is long enough for those who are more sinned against than sinning; whose good instincts have not been corrupted, and whose evil propensities have either not been called into action, or have been successfully resisted and overcome.

The Philosopher of Doncaster found, in his theory of progressive existence, an easy solution for some of those questions on which it is more presumptuous than edifying to speculate, yet whereon that restless curiosity which man derives from the leaven of the forbidden fruit, makes it difficult for a busy mind to refrain from speculating. The horrid opinion which certain Fathers entertained concerning the souls of unbaptized infants, he never characterized by any lighter epithet than damnable, for he used to say, “it would be wicked to use a weaker expression:” and the more charitable notion of the Limbo he regarded as a cold fancy, neither consonant to the heart of man, nor consistent with the wisdom and goodness of the Creator. He thought that when the ascent of being has been from good to better through all its stages, in moral qualities as well as in physical developement, the immortal spirit might reach its human stage in such a state that it required nothing more than the vehicle of humanity, and might be spared its probation. As Enoch had been translated without passing through death, so he thought such happy spirits might be admitted into a higher sphere of existence without passing through the trials of sin and the discipline of sorrow.