That beams with new quick thoughts, yet undefined,
That tell of what is now and what may be.
O may the God who taught us that, like thee,
We should be pure and spotless, bless thee still;
Lay on thy infant head His hand, to free
Thine heart from sin, and form thee to His will,
Cleanse thee from aught that’s evil or defiled,
And keep thee as thou art, my darling child.”
George Eliot somewhere speaks of a promise void, like so many other sweet, illusory promises of our childhood; void as promises made in Eden before the seasons were divided, and when the starry blossoms grew side by side with the ripening peach—impossible to be fulfilled when the golden gates had been passed. Mr. Dickens says of the faint image of Eden which is stamped upon our hearts in childhood, that it “chafes and rubs in our rough struggles with the world, and soon wears away; too often to leave nothing but a mournful blank remaining.” Elia, the essay writer, is no way backward to own the demerits and even delinquencies of himself as Elia, the middle aged man; but for the child Elia, that “other me,” there, in the background,—he must take leave to cherish the remembrance of that young master—with as little reference, he protests, to this stupid changeling of five-and-forty, as if it had been a child of some other house, and not his father’s son. “I know how it shrank from any the least colour of falsehood. God help thee, Elia, how art thou changed! Thou art sophisticated. I know how honest, how courageous (for a weakling) it was—how religious, how imaginative, how hopeful. From what have I not fallen, if the child I remember was indeed myself!”
Stupid changelings of forty-five, their name is Legion, for they are indeed many. Glance with Shenstone at the shiny row of plump promissory faces in the dame school:—