CHILDREN AND KITTENS. APHORISMS ASCRIBED TO THE LAUREATE, DR. SOUTHEY.
MORE COLUMBIAN PHILOSOPHY.
Oh! if in after life we could but gather
The very refuse of our youthful hours!
CHARLES LLOYD.
O dear little children, you who are in the happiest season of human
life, how will you delight in the Story of the Three Bears, when Mamma
reads it to you out of this nice book, or Papa, or some fond Uncle,
kind Aunt, or doting Sister! Papa and Uncle, will do the Great, Huge
Bear, best; but Sister, and Aunt, and Mamma, will excel them in the
Little, Small, Wee Bear, with his little, small, wee voice. And O Papa
and Uncle, if you are like such a Father and such an Uncle as are at
this moment in my mind's eye, how will you delight in it, both for the
sake of that small, but “fit audience,” and because you will perceive
how justly it may be said to be
—a well-writ story,
Where each word stands so well placed that it passes
Inquisitive detraction to correct.[1]
[Footnote 1: DAVENPORT.]
It is said to be a saying of Dr. Southey's, that “a house is never
perfectly furnished for enjoyment, unless there is a child in it
rising three years old, and a kitten rising six weeks.”
Observe, reader; this is repeated upon _On-dit's_ authority, which is
never to be taken for more than it is worth. I do not affirm that Dr.
Southey has said this, but he is likely enough to have said it; for I
know that he sometimes dates his letters from Cat's Eden. And if he
did say so, I agree with him, and so did the Doctor; he _specialiter_
as regards the child, I _specialiter_ as regards the kitten.
Kitten is in the animal world what the rosebud is in the garden; the
one the most beautiful of all young creatures, the other the loveliest
of all opening flowers. The rose loses only something in delicacy by
its developement,—enough to make it a serious emblem to a pensive
mind; but if a cat could remember kittenhood, as we remember our
youth, it were enough to break a cat's heart, even if it had nine
times nine heart strings.
Do not the flowers spring fresh and gay,
Pleasant and sweet, in the month of May;
And when their time cometh they fade away.[2]
[Footnote 2: LUSTY JUVENTUS.]
It is another saying of the Laureate's, according to _On-dit_, that,
“live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half
of your life.” They appear so while they are passing; they seem to
have been so when we look back upon them; and they take up more room
in our memory than all the years that succeed them.
But in how strong a light has this been placed by the American teacher
Jacob Abbott whose writings have obtained so wide a circulation in
England. “Life, he says, if you understand by it the season of
preparation for eternity, is more than half gone;—life so far as it
presents opportunities and facilities for penitence and pardon,—so far
as it bears on the formation of character, and is to be considered as
a period of probation,—is unquestionably more than half gone, to those
who are between fifteen and twenty. In a vast number of cases it is
more than half gone, even in _duration_: and if we consider the
thousand influences which crowd around the years of childhood and
youth, winning us to religion, and making a surrender of ourselves to
Jehovah easy and pleasant,—and, on the other hand, look forward beyond
the years of maturity, and see these influences losing all their
power, and the heart becoming harder and harder under the deadening
effects of continuance in sin,—we shall not doubt a moment that the
years of immaturity make a far more important part of our time of
probation than all those that follow.”
That pious man, who, while he lived, was the Honourable Charles How,
and might properly now be called the honoured, says, that, “twenty
years might be deducted for education, from the three score and ten,
which are the allotted sum of human life; this portion,” he observes,
“is a time of discipline and restraint, and young people are never
easy till they are got over it.”
There is, indeed, during those years, much of restraint, of
wearisomeness, of hope, and of impatience; all which feelings lengthen
the apparent duration of time. Suffering, I have not included here;
but with a large portion of the human race, in all Christian
countries, (to our shame be it spoken!) it makes a large item in the
account: there is no other stage of life in which so much gratuitous
suffering is endured,—so much that might have been spared,—so much
that is a mere wanton, wicked addition, to the sum of human
misery,—arising solely and directly from want of feeling in others,
their obduracy, their caprice, their stupidity, their malignity, their
cupidity and their cruelty.
_Algunos sabios han dicho que para lo que el hombre tiene aprender es
muy corta la vida; mas yo añado que es muy larga para los que hemos de
padecer._ “Some wise men,” writes Capmany, “have said that life is
very short for what man has to learn,—but I (he says) must add, that
it is very long for what we have to suffer.” Too surely this is but
too true; and yet a more consolatory view may be taken of human
existence. The shortest life is long enough for those who are more
sinned against than sinning; whose good instincts have not been
corrupted, and whose evil propensities have either not been called
into action, or have been successfully resisted and overcome.
The Philosopher of Doncaster found, in his theory of progressive
existence, an easy solution for some of those questions on which it is
more presumptuous than edifying to speculate, yet whereon that
restless curiosity which man derives from the leaven of the forbidden
fruit, makes it difficult for a busy mind to refrain from speculating.
The horrid opinion which certain Fathers entertained concerning the
souls of unbaptized infants, he never characterized by any lighter
epithet than _damnable_, for he used to say, “it would be wicked to
use a weaker expression:” and the more charitable notion of the Limbo
he regarded as a cold fancy, neither consonant to the heart of man,
nor consistent with the wisdom and goodness of the Creator. He thought
that when the ascent of being has been from good to better through all
its stages, in moral qualities as well as in physical developement,
the immortal spirit might reach its human stage in such a state that
it required nothing more than the vehicle of humanity, and might be
spared its probation. As Enoch had been translated without passing
through death, so he thought such happy spirits might be admitted into
a higher sphere of existence without passing through the trials of sin
and the discipline of sorrow.