the window sills, the running brooks became steel, and the soft earth iron, and the snow, the hard frozen snow, lay deep all over the country, in many places along the high roads, over the tops of the highest hedges, and in less frequented ways, over commons, and wastes, and through coppice dingles, and in the sinuous clefts of the hills, not an indication of track, or pathway, not a human footmark, nor a single hoof-print, was discernible—and by those intricate roads it was old Isaac's wont to travel, and now he came not. And " poor Isaac! poor old soul!" was often sorrowfully uttered in the family; "what can have become of him? the old man grows feeble too, and the days are so short!" -And pitying eyes were strained early and late in quest of his solitary figure, towards the quarter where it might be, expected to appear, breaking the dreary horizontal line, where, reversing the general effect of nature, the black sky was seen descending like a leaden vault to the verge of the white desert beneath. Early and late anxious looks were sent in quest of him, into the dark cheerless morning, and more earnestly still into the lowering twilight; and if the dogs barked after nightfall, and an approaching step was heard, willing feet hastened to the door, and ready hands undrew the bolts, and glad tongues were beginning to exclaim," Come in, come in, good Isaac!" But January past, the snow melted away-the unfrozen brooks ran rapidly again, the little birds sang merrily, for sweet Spring was come, but the old man came not-he never came again. And he was long remembered, long missed by every individual of the family; but I missed him most, and remembered him longest. Peculiarly, even at that early age a creature of habit inanimate things were playfellows to me, a solitary child-clinging fondly to all I knew and loved, and to all early associations, it pained me to miss the most insignificant object I had been long accustomed to behold, and scarcely a leaf or flower dropt from its stalk but I did miss it, and mourn that I should see it no more. And poor old Isaac ! poor Tinker! Many Januarys past, and for many seasons the snow fell upon the earth and melted from it, before I ceased, at sight of the first flakes, to exclaim thus in mournful recollection-And this

was sorrow,real sorrow-the beginning of sorrows, and therefore, trivial as some may deem it, a touching and an awful thing to contemplate. Who would gaze without a thrill of intense feeling, on the few first drops that ooze slowly through the straining timbers of some mighty dike, previous to the bursting up of its imprisoned waters? And who can look but with deep and tender emotion on the first prelusive tears that escape through the unclosing floodgates of human sorrow?—Yes, by the time we start forward on the career of youth, if even our nearest and dearest friends still encircle us, how many of those persons to whom habit or affection linked us, though in far less powerful bands, must have finished their allotted race! Even irrational creatures-the very animals that were wont to range about the house and fields-many of them, perhaps, our familiar friends and playmates. Not one of these has dropt into the dust unmissed; and in the world we are entering, how many of the objects we shall eagerly pursue, may fail to afford us half the gratification we have known in those childish, innocent attachments! Our very pleasures -our most perfect enjoyments in mature life, bring with them a certain portion of disquietude-a craving after new, or higher enjoyments—an anxious calculation on the probable stability of those already ours—a restless anticipation of the future. And there in that very point-consists the great barrier separating youth from childhood. The child enjoys every thing-that is, abstractedly from all reference to the past-all inquiry into the future. He feels that he is happy, and, satisfied with that blest perception, searches not into the nature of, or probable duration of, his bliss. There may be there are, in after life, intervals of far sublimer happiness; for if thought-if knowledge, bringeth a curse with it, casting, as it were, the shadow of death over all that in this world seemed fair, and good, and perfect, reason, enlightened by revelation, and supported by faith, hath power to lift that gloomy veil, and to see beyond it "the glory that shall be revealed hereafter." But with the exception of such moments, when the heart communes with Heaven-when our thoughts are, in a manner, like

the angels, ascending and descending thereon, what feelings of the human mind can be thought so nearly to resemble those of the yet guiltless inhabitants of Eden, as the sensations of a young and happy child? It is true he has been told, and taught to read, the story of man's first disobedience, and his fall. He has been told that there is such a thing as death. It has even been explained to him, with the simple illustrations best calculated to impress the awful subject on his young mind, and his earnest eyes have filled with tears, at hearing that such or such a dear friend, on whose knee he has been wont to sit-whose neck he has often embraced so lovingly, is taken away out of the world, and buried under the earth in the churchyard. His eyes will fill with tears— his little bosom will heave with sobs, at this dismal hearing; but then he is told that the dear friend is gone to God-that his spirit is gone to God, to live for ever, and be happy in heaven, and that if he is a good child, he will go to heaven too, and live always with him there. He listens to this with much the same joyful eagerness as if he were promised to go the next day, in a fine coach, to spend the whole day with the friend whose absence, more than whose death, his little heart deplores so bitterly. He cannot conceive death-He cannot yet be made sensible that it hath entered into the world with sin, and is mixed up with all things and substances therein. He sports among the sweet flowers of the field, without observing that they fade and perish in the even ing, and that the place thereof knoweth them no more. He revels in the bright summer evening-in the warm autumn sun, without anticipating the approach of winter. He leaps up joyously into the arms of venerable old age, without a glance towards the almost certainty that that grey head must be laid in the dust, ere his own bright ringlets cluster with darker shade over a manly forehead. There is in childhood a holy ignorance-a beautiful credulity-a sort of sanctity that one cannot contemplate without something of the reverential feeling with which one should approach beings of celestial nature. The impress of the Divine nature is, as it were, fresh on the infant spirit-fresh and unsullied by contact with this wither

ing world. One trembles, lest an impure breath should dim the clearness of its bright mirror. And how perpetually must those who are in the ha bit of contemplating childhood-of studying the characters of little children, feel and repeat to their own hearts," Of such is the kingdom of heaven!"-Ay, which of us-of the wisest amongst us, may not stoop to receive instruction and rebuke from the character of a little child? Which of us, by comparison with its sublime simplicity, has not reason to blush for the littleness-the insincerity-the worldliness-the degeneracy, of his own? How often has the innocent remark-the artless question-the_natural acuteness of a child, called up into older cheeks a blush of accusing consciousness! How often might the prompt, candid, honourable decision of an infant, in some question of right and wrong, shame the hesitating, calculating evasiveness of mature reason!

"Why do you say so, if it is not true?"-" You must not keep that, for it is not yours;"-" If I do this or that, it will make God angry," are remarks I have heard from the lips of "babes and sucklings," the first, in particular, to the no small embarrassment of some who should have been their teachers. When sick, and wearied in heart and spirit of this world's pomps and vanities-its fatiguing glare-its feverish excitement-its treacherous hollowness-its vapid pleasures, and artificial tastes, how refreshing it is to flee back, in thought and spirit, to that time when, with the most exquisite capability of enjoyment, we were satisfied with the most simple objects of interest! It is wonderful to me how any after scenes can ever efface the impression of those early pleasures. For my own part, I am not ashamed to repeat, that some of the happiest moments of my present existence, are those when some trifling incident calls up former thoughts and feelings, renewing, as it were, within me, the heart of a child. Surely, many there are must feel with me -must enjoy, at times, this renovation of the spirit! They-to them alone I address myself-will comprehend the thrilling recollections with which, in my saunter round the garden, I stop to contemplate the little patch of ground, once my exclusive property, where flowers and weeds,

vegetables and young forest-trees, were crammed in together, with covetous industry, and zeal all improvident of the future. They will understand why the fairest flowers of the garden are often discarded from my hand or from my bosom, to make way for a wild rose, a hare-bell, or a field orcas-treasures accessible to me, of which I might at pleasure rifle the meadows and hedges, when the cultured darlings of Flora were forbidden sweets, or sparingly yielded, and carefully picked for me-a restriction fatally diminishing, in my eyes, the value of their coveted beauties. They will understand (how pleasant it is to feel one's self understood!) why, to this day, my eye watches with tender interest-my ear drinks in with pleased attention, the familiar approachthe abrupt song of the domestic robin, not only because he is the acknowledged friend of man, and a sweet warbler, when the general voice of song has ceased among our groves, but because the time has been, when I looked upon the eloquent-eyed bird with a tender veneration, almost awful, believing, as I believed in my own existence, every syllable of that pathetic story, "The Babes in the Wood;"-how the unnatural Uncle the false guardian, having decoyed those pretty innocent creatures into the depths of the dark forest, left them without food to perish there, and how they wandered about for many, many days, living on hips, and haws, and wild bramble-berries, (delicious food, I thought, if one could have had enough) till at last, growing weak and weary-their feet pricked and bleeding with thorns, and their tender limbs bruised and torn among the bushes, they laid themselves down in each other's arms, at the foot of an old mossy tree,-their little arms about each other's neck-their soft cheeks pressed close together; and so fell asleep, and never awoke again, but lay there, day after day, stiff and cold, two little pale corpses; and how Robin Redbreast, pious Robin Redbreast, hopped about them, and watched them sorrowfully, with his large dark eyes of "human meaning;" and how at last he brought dead leaves in his bill, one by one, and strewed them so thickly as to cover up from sight the faces and forms of the dead children. There must be, who have believed as

I believed who have wept as I wept, at the relation of that mournful history. They will, perhaps, also remem ber, as I do, to have held in their hands the pretty speckled insect, the Lady Bird, and to have addressed to it the half sportive, half serious intimation, "Lady Bird! Lady Bird! fly away home; your house is on fire, your children will burn." But posibly, even they will laugh at me for confessing, that I had a sort of mysterious, undefined belief, that there was some real meaning in my metrical warning; and they will laugh yet more incredulously, when I avow that I have often shuddered with superstitious horror, when the nurse-maid, on seeing me pull the small heart-shaped pods of the white chick-weed, has startled me with the vulgar saying,— "Ah! naughty girl, you've plucked your mother's heart out!" Be it as it may, I still, even to this hour, connect with those trivial things-those nursery tales-those senseless sayings, the memory of mental impressions so vivid—so delicious-occasionally so painful, yet secretly and intently dwelt on with a strange kind of infatuation, especially those feelings of enthusiastic affection for particular individuals, I was too shy to express in all their glowing warmth; and those vague, dreamy, superstitious reveries, and awfully delightful terrors, that always made me court solitude and darkness, though the sound of a falling leaf would, at such times, set my heart beating audibly; and in the absence of light, my very breathing would seem impeded; and I have closed my eye-lids, and kept them fast shut for hours, fearing to encounter the sight of some grisly phantom; then opened them, in sudden desperation, and, in the expectation of seeing

I know not what. I still, even to this hour, at sight of many insignificant objects, recal to mind so vividly, what were formerly my feelings, associated with such, that the intermediate space between past and present, seems, in a manner, annihilated, and I forget my present self, in the little happy being whose heart and fancy luxuriated in a world of beauty and happiness, such as the most inspired dream of poet or philosopher has never yet pourtrayed. The ideal world of a child's imagination is the creation of a far holier spell than hath