face, the nurse sat powerless and still; she dared not even cry out; she was not near enough to throw herself between the victim and the blow. The heavy mass was thrown down with a tremendous force and crash on the floor beside the cradle, and the babe awoke terrified and screaming, clung to his delighted mother, who had made the experiment to discover whether her child had the precious gift of voice and hearing, or was, like herself, a

mute.

In his "Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People," Charles Lamb speaks of "the airs which these creatures give themselves when they come, as they generally do, to have children. When I consider how little of a rarity children are—that every street and blind alley swarms with them-that the poorest people commonly have them in most abundance-that there are few marriages that are not blest with at least one of these bargains how often they turn out ill and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, &c.-I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them. If they were young phoenixes, indeed, that were born but one in a hundred years, there might be a pretext. But when they are so common

It is, however, far better for married people to take pride in their children than to be as indifferent to them as was a certain old lady who had brought up a family of children near a river. A gentleman once said to her, “I should think you would have lived in constant fear that some of them would have got drowned." Oh no," re

66

66

sponded the old lady, we only lost three or four in that way."

What is the use of a child? Not very much unless its parents accept it, not as a plaything, much less as a nuisance, but as a most sacred trust-a talent to be put to the best account. It is neither to be spoiled nor buried in the earth-how many careless mothers do this literally! -but to be made the most of for God and for man.

Per

haps there was only One who perfectly understood the use of a child. "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God." In some lines to a child Longfellow has well answered the question we have been considering.

“Enough! I will not play the Seer;
I will no longer strive to ope
The mystic volume, where appear
The herald Hope, forerunning Fear,
And Fear, the pursuivant of Hope,
Thy destiny remains untold."

In the next chapter we shall point out how useful children are in educating their parents.

"O dearest, dearest boy! my heart

For better lore would seldom yearn,

Could I but teach the hundredth part

Of what from thee I learn."- Wordsworth.

"How admirable is the arrangement through which human beings are led by their strongest affections to subject themselves to a discipline they would else elude."-Herbert Spencer.

Y friend," said an old Quaker, to a lady who contemplated adopting a child, "I know not how far thou wilt succeed in educating her, but

I am quite certain she will educate you." How encouraging and strengthening it should be for parents to reflect that, in training up their children in the way they should go, they are at the same time training up themselves in the way they should go; that along with the education of their children their own higher education cannot but be carried on. In "Silas Marner," George Eliot has shown how by means of a little child a human soul may be redeemed from cold, petrifying isolation;

how all its feelings may be freshened, rejuvenated, and made to flutter with new hope and activity.

Very simple is the pathos of this matchless work of art. Nothing but the story of a faithless love and a false friend and the loss of trust in all things human or divine. Nothing but the story of a lone, bewildered weaver, shut out from his kind, concentrating every baulked passion into one-the all-engrossing passion for gold. And then the sudden disappearance of the hoard from its accustomed hiding-place, and in its stead the startling apparition of a golden-haired little child found one snowy winter's night sleeping on the floor in front of the glimmering hearth. And the gradual reawakening of love in the heart of the solitary man, a love "drawing his hope and joy continually onward beyond the money," and once more bringing him into sympathetic relations with his fellow men. "In old days," says the story, "there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction; a hand is put into theirs which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward, and the hand may be a little child's."

66

Children renew the youth of their parents and enable them to mount up with wings as eagles, instead of becoming chained to the rock of selfishness. We do not believe that all children are born good," for it is the experience of every one that the evil tendencies of fathers are visited upon their children unto the third and fourth generation. Nevertheless all men are exhorted by the

highest authority to follow their innocency, which is great indeed as compared to our condition who—

66

"Through life's drear road, so dim and dirty,

Have dragged on to three-and-thirty."

"Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein." Evil tendencies are checked and good ones are educated or drawn out by children, for they call to remembrance

"Those early days, when I
Shined in my angel-infancy,

Before I taught my tongue to wound

My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense

A several sin to every sense,

But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness."

When daily farther from the east-from God who is our home-we have travelled, children are sent to recall us or at least to make us long "to travel back, and tread again that ancient track."

Whatever we attempt to teach children we must first practise ourselves. Whatever a parent wishes his child to avoid he must make up his mind to renounce, and, on the other hand, if we leave off any good habit, we need not expect our children to continue it. Only the other day I heard a boy of five say to his father, “You must not be cross, for if you are, I shall be that when I grow up." "Mother," said a small urchin, who had just been saying his prayers at her knees; "Mother, when may I leave off my prayers?" "Oh, Tommy, what a notion !