general, or any form of religion in particular, as having "too much of it too early. The mother of Epicurus was the most superstitious of women." One of Macaulay's acutest critics is clear that, strange as the saying may seem, his parentage was his grand disadvantage: instead of the distinguishing qualities of Zachary Macaulay being perpetuated in his son, "the reaction from them was as marked as often happens in the case of the children of eminent men. We see the sons of remarkably pious clergymen grow up to be men of the world," etc. Very early in life Thomas Babington "heard more than boyhood can endure of sentiment and philanthropy; the sensibilities of the Clapham set of religionists proved too much for the thinking thoughtless schoolboy."" Passages in the plural might be cited from Lord Macaulay's books, indicative of his keen recognition of the like liabilities to reaction, however strenuously he might have demurred to the application to himself, and to his own bringing up, of the reactionary law. Two will fully suffice. Sir William Temple he describes as one who, having been disgusted by the morose austerity of the Puritans," and surrounded from childhood by the "hubbub of conflicting sects, might easily learn to feel an impartial contempt for them all." And Thomas Wharton he describes as the son of a renowned distributor of Calvinistic tracts, and patron of Calvinistic divines; the boy's first years being passed amidst Geneva bands, heads of lank hair, "upturned noses, nasal psalmody, and sermons three hours long. Plays and poems, hunting and dancing, were proscribed by the austere discipline of his saintly family. The fruits of this education became visible, when, from the sullen mansion of Puritan parents, the hotblooded, quickwitted young patrician emerged into the gay and voluptuous London of the Restoration. The most dissolute cavaliers stood aghast at the dissoluteness of the emancipated precisian." Wharton is said to have early acquired and to have retained to the last the reputation of being the greatest rake in England. WH PAST CURE, PAST CARE. 2 SAMUEL xii. 21-23. HILE his stricken child was yet alive, David fasted and wept, for who could tell but that God might be gracious to him, and let the little sufferer live? But so soon as ever David perceived, from the whispering of his servants, that the child was dead, and had been assured of the fact by a straightforward answer to a straightforward question, he arose from the earth, whence the elders of his house in vain had sought to raise him, and whence he would not stir to eat bread with them, throughout that fatal illness; he "arose from the earth, and washed and anointed himself, and changed his apparel, and came into the house of the Lord and worshipped; then he came to his own house, and when he required they set bread before him, and he did eat."1 His servants were perplexed at this abrupt change and contrast, and questioned him as to the why and wherefore of it all. And the king made it plain to them at once. He fasted and wept while there was life in the child, for while there 's life there's hope. But, the child dead and gone, wherefore should the father fast? "Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." David was not the man in such a case to make much ado, with weeping and wailing, over one dead, not sleeping. Almost he could have laughed such weeping to scorn, once for all knowing that the child was dead. It is observably characteristic of him, on a later occasion of 1 In illustration of the argument that the real way of finding out whether a boy understands what he reads is not to bid him, as some authorities have done, paraphrase it into the high polite style, but to bid him tell the story in the plainest words of daily life, we read of a child in a National school being asked, "What did David do when they told him that the child was dead?" 'Please, sir, he cleaned himself, and took to his victuals." In the style recommended and enforced by some "authorities" aforesaid, the question and answer, it has been pungently suggested, might (and perhaps would) stand thus : 66 66 "Q. What course of action did David pursue when he received intelligence of the demise of his infant? 66 A. He performed his ablutions, and immediately proceeded to partake of refreshments." bereavement, that whereas the soul of king David longed to go forth unto Absalom, who was living, "he was comforted concerning Amnon, seeing he was dead." What strikes many readers as odd in the exclamation of the poor woman newly made a widow, and only now consciously so, in Wordsworth's Peter Bell, "Oh, God be praised, my heart's at ease, For he is dead; I know it well!" is but a realistic picture from nature after all. When the father of John Wesley died, Mrs. Wesley, who for several days, whenever she entered his room, had been carried out of it in a fit, "recovered her fortitude now, and said her prayers were heard, for God had granted him an easy death, and had strengthened her to bear it." John Newton of Olney was one who, as Southey describes him, could project his feelings, and relieve himself in the effort; no husband, we are assured, ever loved his wife more passionately, or with a more imaginative affection; the long and wasting disease by which she was consumed affected him proportionably to this deep attachment; but "immediately upon her death he roused himself, after the example of David, threw off his grief, and preached her funeral sermon." No less sagaciously than sententiously the Duke of Venice expresses himself in Shakspeare : "When remedies are past, the griefs are ended, By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended." It may be thought a singular, but Adam Smith believes it to be a just, observation, that in the misfortunes which admit of some remedy the greater part of mankind do not either so readily or so universally recover their natural and usual tranquillity, as in those which plainly admit of none. "In 1 After this fashion, barring the philosophical expression, does honest Luke strive to comfort the poor ruined and paralysed miller in George Eliot's tale. "Help me down, Luke, I'll go and see everything," said Mr. Tulliver, leaning on his stick, and stretching out his other hand towards Luke. "Ay, sir," said Luke, as he gave his arm to his master, "you'll make your mind up to't a bit better when you've seen everything; you'll get used to 't. That's what my mother says about her shortness o' breath; the misfortunes for which the nature of things admits, or seems to admit, of a remedy, but in which the means of applying that remedy are not within the reach of the sufferer, his vain and fruitless attempts to restore himself to his former position, his continual anxiety for their success, his repeated disappointments upon their miscarriage, are what chiefly hinder him from resuming his natural tranquillity, and frequently render miserable, during the whole of his life, a man to whom a greater misfortune, but which plainly admitted of no remedy, would not have given a fortnight's disturbance." While the blow is coming, as Hazlitt says, we prepare to meet it; we think to ward off or break its force, we arm ourselves with patience to endure what cannot be avoided, we agitate ourselves with fifty needless alarms about it; but when the blow is struck, the pang is over, the struggle is no longer necessary, and we cease? to harass or torment ourselves about it more than we can help. "Criminals are observed to grow more anxious as their trial approaches; but after their sentence is passed they become tolerably resigned, and generally sleep sound the night before its execution." 3 she says she's made friends wi't now, though she fought agin' it sore when it fust come on."—The Mill on the Floss, book iii., chap. viii. When things are at the worst with Effie Deans at her trial, and she is left to meet her doom all alone, "The bitterness of it is now past," she says, and we are told how "she seemed to find, in her despairing and deserted state, a courage which she had not yet exhibited."—Heart of MidLothian, chap. xxii. 1 Or as Burns wrote in his lines in Friars-Carse Hermitage : "For the future be prepared ; Guard whatever thou canst guard; But, thy utmost duly done, Welcome what thou canst not shun." 2 Queen Mary was incessant with tears and supplications for Rizzio's life, till life in him there was none left. When she learned that he was dead, she dried her eyes. "I will now," she said, "study revenge." An advanced student she soon became, or there be liars else. 3 When Johnson, talking with Boswell, who was fresh from witnessing a Tyburn execution scene, declared our feeling for the distresses of others to be greatly exaggerated, and that more than a certain degree of feeling to prompt us to do good "Providence does not intend: it would be misery to no purpose"; "But suppose now, sir," urged Boswell, "that one of your intimate friends were apprehended for an offence for which he might be G Rousseau congratulates himself on cette heureuse disposition which enabled him so speedily to lose the remembrance of troubles past. He does indeed reproach his cruelle imagination, which tormented itself incessantly with anticipating evils to come; but by way of compensation, it effected a diversion to his memory, preventing his recalling those which were gone; against what is over there is no further precaution to take, and it is useless to waste a thought thereupon. 'Tis man's nature, says Schiller's Illo, "To make the best of a bad thing once past. Surely he does best, muses Owen Feltham, who is careful to preserve the blessings he has as long as he can; and when they must take their leave, to let them go without sorrowing, or over valuing them. "Vain are those lamentations that have no better fruit than rendering the soul unpleasant. I would do anything that lies in man to comfort or preserve the life of a friend; but once dead, all that tears can do is only to show the world our weakness. I bespeak myself a fool, to do that which reason tells me is unreasonable."1 One of Kant's hanged." JOHNSON: "I should do what I could to bail him, and give him any other assistance; but if he were once fairly hanged, I should not suffer." BOSWELL: "Would you eat your dinner that day, sir?" JOHNSON: “Yes, sir, and eat it as if he were eating with me.” (Life, sub anno 1769.) Observable is an entry of Sir Walter Scott's in his Diary, amid the accumulated distresses of 1826. "From what I hear, the poor man Constable is not sensible of the nature of his own situation; for myself, I have succeeded in putting the matter perfectly out of my mind since I cannot help it, and have arrived at a flocci-pauci-nihili-pili-fication of misery, and I thank whoever invented that long word." (Diary, March 8, 1826.) 1 Against certain cut and dried comfort-mongers of this complexion, however, Mrs. Gaskell pens a natural as well as forcible protest when she writes, that of all trite, worn out, hollow mockeries of comfort that were ever uttered by people who will not take the trouble of sympathising with others, the one she dislikes the most is the exhortation not to grieve over an event, "for it cannot be helped." "Do you think," she demands, "if I could help it, I would sit still, with folded hands, content to mourn? Do you not believe that so long as hope remained I would be up and doing? I mourn because what has occurred cannot be helped. The reason you give me for not grieving is the very and sole reason of my |