When the children walk out for an airing, of course they are to be little ladies and gentlemen. They are not to scamper to and fro; a little gentle amble with a hoop ought to be their severest exercise. In sending them to walk abroad, it is a good thing to let their legs be bare. The gentleman papa, probably, would find bare legs rather cold walking in the streets of London; but the gentleman son, of course, has quite another constitution. Besides, how can a boy, not predisposed that way, hope to grow up consumptive, if some pains are not taken with him in his childhood?
It is said that of old time children in the Balearic Islands were not allowed to eat their dinner, until, by adroitness in the shooting of stones out of a sling, they had dislodged it from a rafter in the house. Children in the British Islands should be better treated. Let them not only have their meals unfailingly, but let them be at all other times tempted and bribed to eat. Cakes and sweetmeats of alluring shape and color, fruits, and palatable messes, should, without any regularity, be added to the diet of a child. The stomach, we know, requires three or four hours to digest a meal, expects a moderate routine of tasks, and between each task looks for a little period of rest. Now, as we hope to create a weak digestion, what is more obvious than that we must use artifice to circumvent the stomach? In one hour we must come upon it unexpectedly with a dose of fruit and sugar; then, if the regular dinner have been taken, astonish the digestion, while at work upon it, with the appearance of an extra lump of cake, and presently some gooseberries. In this way we soon triumph over Nature, who, to speak truth, does not permit to us an easy victory, and does try to accommodate her working to our whims. We triumph, and obtain our reward in children pale and polite, children with appetites already formed, that will become our good allies against their health in after life.
Principiis obsta. Let us subdue mere nature at her first start, and make her civilized in her beginnings. Let us wipe the rose-tint out of the child's cheek, in good hope that the man will not be able to recover it. White, yellow, and purple—let us make them to be his future tricolor.
II. The Londoner's Garden.
Brick walls do not secrete air. It comes in through your doors and windows, from the streets and alleys in your neighborhood; it comes in without scraping its feet, and goes down your throat, unwashed, with small respect for your gentility. You must look abroad, therefore, for some elements of an unwholesome home: and when, sitting at home, you do so, it is a good thing if you can see a burial-ground—one of “God's gardens,” which our city cherishes.
Now, do not look up with a dolorous face, saying, “Alas! these gardens are to be taken from us!” Let agitators write and let Commissioners report, let Government nod its good-will, and although all the world may think that our London burial-grounds are about to be incontinently jacketed in asphalte, and that we ourselves, when dead, are to be steamed off to Erith—we are content: at present this is only gossip.[1] On one of the lowest terraces of hell, says Dante, he found a Cordelier, who had been dragged thither by a logical demon, in defiance of the expostulations of St. Francis. The sin of that monk was a sentence of advice for which absolution had been received before he gave it: “Promise much, and perform little.” In the hair of any Minister's head, and of every Commissioner's head, we know not what “black cherubim” may have entwined their claws. There is hope, while there is life, for the old cause. But if those who have authority to do so really have determined to abolish intramural burial, let us call upon them solemnly to reconsider their verdict. Let them ponder what follows.
Two or three years ago, a book, promulgating notions upon spiritual life, was published in London by the Chancellor of a certain place across the Channel. It was a clever book; and, among other matter, broached a theory. “Our souls,” the Rev. Chancellor informed us, “consist of the essence, extract, or gas contained in the human body;” and, that he might not be [pg 603] vague, he made special application to a chemist, who “added some important observations of his own respecting the corpse after death.” But we must decorate a great speculation with the ornamental words of its propounder.
“The gases into which the animal body is resolved by putrefaction are ammonia, carbonic acid, carbonic oxide, cyanogen, and sulphureted, phosphureted, and carbureted hydrogen. The first, and the two last-named gases, are most abundant.” We omit here some details as to the time a body takes in rotting. “From which it appears, that these noble elements and rich essences of humanity are too subtle and volatile to continue long with the corpse; but soon disengage themselves, and escape from it. After which nothing remains but the foul refuse in the vat; the mere caput mortuum in the crucible; the vile dust and ashes of the tomb. Nor does inhumation, however deep in the ground, nor drowning in the lowest depths and darkest caverns of the fathomless abyss, prevent those subtle essences, rare attenuate spirits, or gases, from escaping; or chain down to dust those better, nobler elements of the human body. No bars can imprison them; no vessels detain them from their kindred element, confine them from their native home.”
We are all of us familiar with the more noticeable of these “essences,” by smell, if not by name. Metaphysicians tell us that perceptions and ideas will follow in a train: perhaps that may account for the sudden recollection of an old-fashioned story—may the moderns pardon it. A young Cambridge student, airing his wisdom at a dinner-party, was ingenious upon the Theory of Winds. He was most eloquent concerning heat and cold; radiation, rarefaction; polar and equatorial currents; he had brought his peroration to a close, when he turned round upon a grave Professor of his College, saying, “And what, sir, do you believe to be the cause of wind?” The learned man replied, “Pea-soup—pea-soup!” In the group of friends around a social soup-tureen, must we in future recognize
“The feast of reason, and—the flow of soul!”