rightly conceiving this to be the seminary of the virtues and foundation of states. There it stands, the ornament of the landscape, and for the human hospitalities: we cannot render it too attractive. Let it be the home of beauty, the haunt of affection, of ideas. Let its chambers open eastward admitting the sunshine for our own and children's sake. Do they not covet the clear sky, delighting in the blue they left so lately, nay cannot wholly leave in coming into nature, whereof they are ever asking news? These gay enthusiasts must run eagerly, and never have enough of it. How soon the clouds clear away from their faces! How sufficient they are to the day, and the joy it brings them! Their poise and plenitude rebuke us.
"Happy those early days when I Shined in my angel infancy; Before I taught my soul to wound My conscience with a sinful sound, Or taught my soul to fancy aught But a white celestial thought, Or had the black art to dispense A several sin to every sense, But felt through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness."
Charming pictures these bright boys, confiding girls, as full of promise to themselves as we were at their age; are still, if faithful to the beautiful vision. Why else should the flame pale as we come up into life, we pleasing ourselves nor others more, perhaps despair of maintaining the virtues we espoused so eagerly in our youth? Must we
"When we've enjoyed our ends then lose them, And all our appetites be but as dreams To laugh at in our ages?"
If this fresh score of years did not deceive us, shall a life of threescore, with its deeper glances into the mystery, lead us to doubt the longevity of a sentiment of whose imperishableness that life itself is the best evidence we need ask? Are we to be left orphans when taken from nature's arms, robbed of all that made life desirable before? Nature cared for us; Persons failed us, and all unawares we lapsed out of our paradise, its gates barred against us.
"I cannot reach it; and my striving eye Dazzles at it, as at eternity. Were now that chronicle alive, Those white designs which children drive, And the thoughts of each harmless hour, With their content too in my power, Quickly would I make my path even, And by mere playing go to heaven.
Dear harmless age, the short, swift span Where weeping virtue parts with man; Where love without lust dwells, and bends What way we please, without self-ends: An age of mysteries! which he Must live twice that would God's face see; Where angels guard, and with it play, Angels, which foul men drive away."
'Tis sad to consider how long time is consumed in wiping away the stains which had been insinuated into the breast during these earlier years and up to coming manhood,—to what we call the maturity of our powers. Life is too much for most. So much of age, so little youth; living for the most part in the moment, and dating existence by the memory of its burdens. Men think they once were not, and fear the like fate may overtake them, as if time were older than their minds. 'Tis because we always were that we cannot trace our beginnings to the atheism of no-being and resolve ourselves into nothing. Children save us. Rather are we saved by remaining children, as Christ said.
Have we forgotten how things looked to us when we were young; how the dull world the old people lived in seemed to us? 'Twas not ours, nor their dry theism; and our fresh hearts whispered reverently:
"Is not your paradise an Inferno? Please never name it. While in Heaven I speak not of it: I hum that song to myself. Will you spoil my paradise too? Come with me, come, and I will show you Elysium; I know all about it; I am not deceived. I feel it to be solid, safe. It makes good its pledges always. I have a home of all delights—am admitted when I please, while you seem vagabonds and woebegones, bereft of friends, the Friend of friends. Am I to quit my present satisfactions for your promised joys. Unkind! this taking me from my paradise, unless you conduct me to a happier."