Paley regarded the pleasure which the amusements of childhood afford as
a striking instance of the beneficence of the Deity. We have several
instances of great men descending from the more austere pursuits to
these simple but innocent pastimes. The Persian ambassadors found
Agesilaus, the Lacedæmonian monarch, riding on a stick. The ambassadors
found Henry the Fourth playing on the carpet with his children; and it
is said that Domitian, after he had possessed himself of the Roman
empire, amused himself by catching flies. Socrates, if tradition speaks
truly, was partial to the recreation of riding on a wooden horse; for
which, as Valerius Maximus tells us, his pupil Alcibiades laughed at
him. (Is not this the origin of our rocking-horse?) Did not Archytas,
He who could scan the earth and ocean’s bound,
And tell the countless sands that strew the shore,
as Horace says, invent the children’s rattle? Toys have served to unbend
the wise, to occupy the idle, to exercise the sedentary, and to instruct
the ignorant. To come to our own times: we have heard of a
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, a man of grave years and thoughts, being
surprised playing at leap-frog with his young nephews.
The same desire to unstring the bow, as old Æsop taught, impels sturdy
workmen, let loose from their toil, to seek diversion in the amusements
of boyhood. Often have we seen scores of men break forth from a factory
or printing-office for their dinner-hour, and in great measure disport
themselves like schoolboys in a playground.