will see no connexion between them, which will appear to some persons to involve a monstrous exaggeration, if not a downright paradox. And yet, be it said, with all due respect to them, it will comprise neither the one nor the other. It is this, -that men can learn sense and wisdom from the Children's Bower. There now; make what you can of it. We shan't have to wait long to hear the snarling. People hitherto, no doubt, have been very condescending to us. Yes, it has been allowed us to affirm that innocence and simplicity, piety and the kind of poetic thing called ancient Christianity can be learned from children—all this is thought by some to be of no great practical value-they dare say it can be all found with the young, or at least in babyland, but sense and wisdom-oh! really, they must now be excused. If we go on to show or to pretend that sense and wisdom can be learned from company where there is no chin worth a beard, all that an intelligent person can do, they will tell us, will be to shut the book in disgust. Well, if they turn away from us, of course we cannot help it, and we are not to blame for their being unconvinced; though still they need not run so fast, for wisdom will not overtake them; but if they will stand like men, we are ready to do battle with them on this point.

εἰσόκε δαίμων

ἄμμε διακρίνῃ, δώη δ ̓ ἑτέροισί γε νίκην.

We shall begin with a very modest challenge, and let Father Bonifacius advance first with his page open at the words, “De laudibus pueritiæ," and speaking as follows: "Observing how the first age of man is despised or accused of lightness, how this opinion pleases men, and proves injurious to boys and children, I thought that its refutation would be a service rendered to the Christian republic, and that it would be a pious work to undertake the defence of childhood, though I should have to oppose many. This I shall do, therefore; but with such moderation as neither to detract from true praise, nor to mingle false with it." There is nothing very novel or original, therefore, in our proposition, since it has been defended by so ancient an author. Neither is it calculated to startle the really intelligent at any time. "He was no ordinary boy," says a

late writer, alluding to Wordsworth, adding, "though it would be very wonderful to have revealed to us many a common child's thoughts." That's what he may well go on to say. To be sure, as we walk the streets, we might suppose that all children were extraordinary; for no nurse or mother is ever heard admonishing her charge, who is near a plash of mud deep enough to hide a small foot in, without adding audibly, “I never saw such a child!" Wonderful son that can so astonish a mother! But we must take these affirmations for what they are worth. It seems conceded, therefore, by some at least of the ancients and moderns, that young heads as well as hearts can have somewhat in them worth knowing. And, in truth, grownup people might often apply to the former for instruction, as well as to the latter for increase of goodness.

are

"Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mix'd; sweet recreation;

And innocence, which most does please
With meditation."

For theirs

We hear a great deal at present about the education of children; but though there will be no going into a committee on it, we might also have matter to inquire about touching the education of their elders; for it is clear to common people like ourselves, that often manhood and age stand more in need of sense and wisdom than youth.

However, don't fall back on a fanciful bulwark of defence; we are not about to be confronted with any unhealthy evidences of precocious maturity. Each little witness that we have in view, fond of fun and frolic, was, like our John and Thomas, a boy, not a man-too much of a boy, in every sense of the word, to be ranked among phenomenal exceptions. He that will have a cake out of the wheat must tarry the grinding, and the bolting, and the leavening. Neither is it necessary to allude to what might be termed supernatural instances, which so often dictate words like those of our poet,

"So wise, so young, they say, do ne'er live long;

Short summers lightly have a forward spring."

Others may tell you of the childhood of a Cardinal Bembo, of

a Tostatus, of a Politian, a Pascal, a Joseph Scaliger, a Ferdinand de Cordoué, and of many more. It will be quite sufficient for our purpose to take ordinary children and lads, brought up, as we find them here, who will be ready to say,

66

Things growing are not ripe until their season;

So we, being young, till now ripe not to reason."

In the first place, then, it will, perhaps, be granted that what is called worldly wisdom, in which grown-up persons are often such great proficients,-for, as Cæsar said, "Ubi intenderis ingenium valet,"-is not wholly beyond all need of the kind of instruction that young people and even children can supply. If so, we should all look to it; for who knows not that this is where much of the vaunted sense of manhood and age at present is found to end?

It is no wonder, methinks, that the young should dislike the cut of your wise people. "What a pretty thing man is when he goes in his doublet and hose, and leaves off his wit!"

Then, again, there is what might be called the lowering school, which lets down your notions of things scientifically, where nothing but what is tangible is thought worth your money. With all possible admiration for the most brilliant writer of our day, who seems to be the unconscious exponent of this wisdom, I think it may be permitted us to say that children and young persons have some little tiny matter to teach to men who, as a late critic observes, “express the tone of the English governing classes of the day, explicitly maintaining that good means good to eat, good to wear, material commodity; that the glory of modern philosophy is its direction to such fruit, to yield economical inventions, and that its merit is to avoid ideas and morals; who think it the distinctive merit of the Baconian philosophy, that it triumphs over the old Platonic, by its disentangling the intellect from theories of the all-fair and all-good, and pinning it down to the making a better sick-chair or wine-whey for an invalid. That'solid advantage,' or sensual benefit, is the only good; hiding their scepticism under the cant of practical, and virtually holding that to convince the reason, or to touch the conscience, is romantic pretension."

It is very easy for men like Xenocrates, at seventy-five in

quiring about wisdom as if they would have much time for using it, to speak of "the narrow prejudices of childhood," a phrase even found with gentle Goldsmith, as occasionally with Socrates himself; but it will not be quite as devoid of all difficulty to dispense, nevertheless, with some of the notions of children, call them what you like, which are the result in them of three great sources of instruction, namely, by your sceptics' leave, a higher than human light,— ,—a certain inheritance which they possess unconsciously from the poets, philosophers, and historians of antiquity,—and, in fine, from their penny catechism embodying the doctrines of the Bible and the traditions of the Christian Church.

St. Augustin, citing the words, "Lord, the light of thy countenance is imprinted on us," adds, "It is this Divine light which is the only good of man, the only true good *." And Baldesanus says, "Children have sometimes, no doubt, an extraordinary light infused, such as Martin and Nicholas enjoyed, though the common way of their wisdom is by the teaching and examples of others †." "There is in children," as Jamblicus remarks, "a certain notion naturally of the Deity,-'imo tactus quidem divinitatis melior quam notitia.' They have," observes the Père Boutauld, "a supernatural wisdom, of which we may say, 'vapor est virtutis Dei, et emanatio est quadam claritatis omnipotentis; candor est lucis æternæ, et speculum sine macula Dei majestatis ‡.' It was a participation in that wisdom which produced those "precious and pure passages of intense feeling and heavenly light holy and undefiled, and glorious with the changeless passion of eternity, that sanctify, with their shadeless peace, the deep and noble conceptions of the early painters of Italy §." You have a living instance in little John. Though but a child, something great, and with a divinity in it, shines out of his eyes, as an old writer says, and encounters yours with a mixture of what he calls the Gorgon or fervent and the alluring. There was no withstanding that tempered darkness, that innermost look. Children, in fact, can teach us by their very countenance "what foolish, weak, miserable beings

* In Ps. iv.

+ Sap. vii.

† Stimul. Virt. Adoles. Christianæ.
§ Ruskin.

we grown-up people often are in many respects; their very looks, more in sorrow than in anger, will often tell us what no words can *.”

"As they sit and gaze upon us

With those deep and tender eyes,
Like the stars, so still and saintlike,

Looking downwards from the skies."

"No doubt," says Gerson, "youths, with all their need of activity, are sometimes much more fit for contemplation than many old men; for there are youths found who, either from natural disposition, or from good education, or by a singular gift of Divine grace, are most quiet and given to devotion; and who can question but that they are more apt to converse with God than many old men +?" Beautiful as are the forms and countenances of children, the charms of their mind can attract men to a contemplation of that superior loveliness; and it is in that fresh and unpolluted spirit that we can, above all, see the justice of what the philosopher said, "Humanus animus, decerptus ex mente divina, cum alio nullo nisi cum ipso Deo, si hoc fas est dictu, comparari potest ‡." In knowledge the young must be, of course, deficient. But what does it matter? Nay, as a great author observes, "in one respect it matters much, and not to the advantage of their elders; for one effect of knowledge is to deaden the original energy of the whole man. Knowledge," he adds, “is at best the pilgrim's burden or the soldier's panoply, often a weariness to them both. Men look back to the days of childhood as of greatest happiness, because those were the days of greatest wonder, greatest simplicity, and most vigorous imagination. And the whole difference between a man of genius and other men is, that the first remains in great part a child, seeing with the large eyes of children, in perpetual wonder, not conscious of much knowledge, but conscious rather of infinite ignorance §."

Then, again, in estimating the wisdom of the young, we should observe how they possess "that synthetic judgment, à

* Dr. Doyle.

Tuscul. v.

+ De Exercitiis discretis Devotorum Simplicium. § Stones of Venice.