companions seated themselves on the fell side, upon some of the larger stones, and there in full enjoyment of air and sunshine opened their baskets and took their noon-day meal, a little before its due time, with appetites which, quickened by exercise, had outstript the hours. My place was on a bough of the ash tree at a little distance, the water flowing at my feet, and the fall just below me. Among all the sights and sounds of Nature there are none which affect me more pleasurably than these. I could sit for hours to watch the motion of a brook and when I call to mind the happy summer and autumn which I passed at Cintra, in the morning of life and hope, the perpetual gurgling of its tanks and fountains occurs among the vivid recollections of that earthly Paradise as one of its charms. When I had satisfied myself with the prospect, I took from my waistcoat pocket an Amsterdam edition of the Utopia, given me for its convenient portability by one of my oldest and most valued friends. It is of the year 1629, and is the smallest book in my possession, being not four inches long, and less than two in breadth:.. Mr. Dibdin would shudder to see how some nefarious binder has cut it to the quick. Brief as this little work is, it has intro duced into our language a word the meaning of which is understood by thousands and tens of thousands who have never read the fiction from whence it is derived; while volumes upon volumes of metaphysical politics have sunk into the dead pool of oblivion, without raising even a momentary bubble upon its surface. I read till it was time to proceed; and then putting up the book, as I raised my eyes,.. behold the Author was before me. Let the young ones go forward, said he; they will neither see nor hear me; and if your voice reaches them, they will only suppose that you are muttering verses to yourself. Come, children, I exclaimed, up the hill! and off at the word they set. Presently they were scaling the steepest part of the ascent, where a sheep from the flat countries would have feared to climb; and, before I had got half way up the screes, which gave way and rattled beneath me at every step, they were seated on the brow, looking at the two thin cascades where they fall into the ravine which they have made. God and good Angels bless them, said Sir Thomas. Of all sights which can soften and humanize the heart of man, there is none that ought so surely to reach it as that of innocent children enjoying the happiness which is their proper and natural portion. You Of that portion, I replied, these shall never be deprived or curtailed by any act of mine. Whatever may be their allotment in after life, their childhood at least shall be as happy as all wholesome indulgence can render it. were a lover of children: * I have your word for it in my pocket,..nempe reverso domum, cum uxore fabulandum est, garriendum cum liberis. I would rather have heard you talking with them than have listened to your gravest decisions from the bench. SIR THOMAS MORE. You might have heard more than was worth remembering. The nonsense which was thrown off from an alert fancy and a kind heart would have been more to your liking than grave sense, trammelled with forms, and tortured into the service of litigation. In such hours of holyday feeling you might have seen me derive instruc * So also Erasmus describes him,.." pósopyos" ut si quis alius... Vix alius vivit liberorum amantior... And he had a house full of them; his son and his son's wife, his three daughters and their three husbands, and eleven grandchildren, all living with him in the house which he had built at Chelsea,-Erasm. Epist. 1. xxvii. ep. viii. 1506. tion while I was giving it; for there are points, and those of no light importance, on which children are the best teachers. MONTESINOS. Our great philosophic poet has told us so. He says to a child, me. O dearest, dearest boy! my heart For better lore would seldom learn, SIR THOMAS MORE. And what have you learnt from them? MONTESINOS. More than metaphysicians could have taught And I might say more than divines can teach, could I but learn that entire dependence, that willing and happy obedience, that perfect confidence and love, which the child feels towards its parents; and which, did we become in this respect like little children, we should feel towards our heavenly Father. If I have not learnt this from them, as I ought to have done, and strive continually to do, I have at least learnt from myself, through their means, the whole import of that appellation, by which in his boundless mercy He has taught and commanded us to call upon Him. This lesson is worth all it costs! |