My little grandsons visit me at this becoming season of birds and apple
blossoms. They accompany me to the brook, and are pleased with their
willow whistles and sail-boats,--toys delightful to childhood from the
first. Their manners, that first of accomplishments, delight us in
return, showing that the sense of beauty has dawned and their culture
fairly begun. 'Tis a culture to watch them through their days' doings.
Endless their fancies and engagements. What arts, accomplishments,
graces, are woven in their playful panorama; the scene shifting with
the mood, and all in keeping with the laws of thought and of things.
Verily, there are invisible players playing their parts through these
pretty puppets all day long.
To conceive a child's acquirements as originating in nature, dating
from his birth into his body, seems an atheism that only a shallow
metaphysical theology could entertain in a time of such marvellous
natural knowledge as ours. "I shall never persuade myself," said
Synesius, "to believe my soul to be of like age with my body." And yet
we are wont to date our birth, as that of the babes we christen, from
the body's advent so duteously inscribed in our family registers, as if
time and space could chronicle the periods of the immortal mind, and
mark its longevity by our chronometers.[5] Only a God could inspire a
child with the intimations seen in its first pulse-plays; the sprightly
attainments of a single day's doings afford the liveliest proofs of
an omniscient Deity revealing his attributes in the motions of the
little one! Nor is maternity less a special inspiration throbbing
ceaselessly with childhood as a protecting Providence, lifelong. Comes
not the mother to make the Creator's word sure that all he has made
is verily good? For without mother and wife, what more than a rough
outline of divinity were drawn? "That man," says Euripides, "hath made
his fortune who hath married a good wife." For what would some of us
have accomplished, what should we have not done, misdone, without her
counsels to temper our adventurous idealism? Heaven added a new power
to creation when it sent woman into it to complete what He had designed.
[Footnote 5: "Infants," says Olympiodorus, "are not seen to laugh
for some time after birth, but pass the greater part of their time
in sleep; however, in their sleep they appear both to smile and cry.
But can this any otherwise happen than through the soul agitating the
circulations of their animal nature in conformity with the passions it
has experienced before birth into the body? Besides, our looking into
ourselves when we seek to discover any truth, shows that we inwardly
contain truth, though concealed in the darkness of oblivion." Does atom
animate and revive thought, or thought animate and illuminate atom? And
which the elder?]
"He is a parricide to his mother's name,
And with an impious hand, murthers her fame,
Who wrongs the praise of woman; that dares write
Libels on saints, or with foul ink requite
The milk they lent us."
When one becomes indifferent to women, to children and young people, he
may know that he is superannuated, and has withdrawn from whatsoever is
sweetest and purest in human existence. One of the happiest rewards of
age is the enjoyment of children. And when these inherit one's better
gifts and graces, sinking the worse, or omitting them altogether, what
can be added to fill the cup of parental gratitude and delight? I fail
to comprehend how the old and young folks are to enjoy a future heaven
together, unless they have learned to partake in the enjoyments of
this. Shall we picture future separate heavens for them?
Sing, sing, the immortals,
The ancients of days,
Ever crowding the portals
Of earth's populous ways;
The babes ever stealing
Into Eden's glad feeling;
The fore-world revealing
God's face, ne'er concealing.
Sing, sing, the child's fancies,
Its graces and glances,
Plans, pastimes, surprises,
Slips, sorrows, surmises.
Youth's trials and treasures,
Its hopes without measures,
Its labors and leisures;
His world all before him,
High heaven all o'er him;
Life's lengthening story,
Opening glory on glory;
By age ne'er o'ertaken,
By youth near forsaken.
Sings none this fair story,
But dwellers in its glory;
Who would the youth see,
A youth he must be;
Heaven's kingdom alone
To children doth come.
The family is the sensitive plant of civility, the measure of culture.
Take the census of the homes, and you have the sum total of character
and civilization in any community. Sown in the family, the seeds of
holiness are here to be cherished and ripened for immortality. Here is
the seminary of the virtues, the graces, accomplishments, that adorn
and idealize existence. From this college we graduate for better or for
worse. This faculty of the affections, this drinking freshly at the
springs of genius and sensibility, this intimacy with the loveliest and
best in life, is the real schooling, the truest discipline, without
which neither mind nor heart flourish; all other advantages being
of secondary account; wealth, wit, beauty, social position, books,
travel, fellowships, are but sounding names, opportunities of inferior
importance, compared with this endowment of personal influences.
Here, in this atmosphere of love and sympathy, character thrives and
ripens. And were the skill for touching its tender sensibilities,
calling forth its budding gifts, equal to the charms the child has
for us, what noble characters would graduate from our families,--the
community receiving its members accomplished in the Personal graces,
the state its patriots, the church its saints, all glorifying the
race. One day the highest culture of the choicest gifts will be deemed
essential to the heads of families, and the arts of nurture and of
culture honored as the art of arts.
"Boys are dear to divinity," dear to all mankind. What more charming
than to watch the dawning intelligence, clearing itself from the mists
which obscure its vision of the world into which it has but lately
entered? The more attractive, since a fine sentiment then mingles
mythically with the freshness of thought, confuses the sexes, as if
the boy were being transformed into the girl, first entering her wider
world of affection; and the girl in turn were being metamorphosed into
the boy, first becoming conscious of the newer world of intellect; each
entering, by instinct, into the mind of the other. I know not which
is the more charming each in their ways, the coy manners of girls, or
the shy behavior of beautiful boys,--mysteries both to each other, nor
less to their elders. 'Tis the youthful sentiment, whether feminine
or masculine, that renders friendship delightful, the world lovely;
this gone, all is gone that life can enjoy. "There are periods in one's
life," says Pythagoras, "which it is not in the power of any casual
person to connect finely, these being expelled by one another, unless
some sympathetic friend conduct him from birth in a beautiful and
upright manner."