LIFE CURTAILED. 155 



lively French naturalist wanders into imaginative speculation 

 on the probable results of some such life-influencing power in 

 its application to the human race. First, in the case of abbre- 

 viation : " A child," he remarks, " would have little reason 

 to complain of a father who might be enabled to force him, 

 in a few weeks, into a maturity of endowment, bodily and 

 mental." He says, " Qui nous oterait nos premieres annees, qui 

 les ferait passer en quelques jours, nous oterait peu. Qu'est- 

 ce que c'est, que de vivre alors ?' Who but a Frenchman, 

 one of the French noblesse, too, of the eighteenth century, 

 and (admirer of nature as he was) a member, therefore, of 

 society most artificial, could have put the question ? What is 

 it to live in our sweet days of childhood ? It is to gather 

 the first and freshest of spring flowers ; to sip the sparkling 

 surface of a draught which begins to grow vapid even before 

 half-exhausted. So, at least, would most of us reply, on 

 looking back from an advanced station on the earliest stages 

 of our journey. It is likely, however, that if the infant, the 

 school-boy, and the youth, could each respond to the question, 

 " Qu'est-ce que c'est que de vivre ?" "What is life to you ?" 

 the infant would lisp " It is to be pricked by an unsuspected 

 pin, and slapped by nurse for crying at the smart." The 

 school-boy would tell us " It is to dream of home an hour 

 too long, and creep down on a January morning an hour too 

 late ;" and the smart lad or forward little miss in teens would 

 reply, " It is to be called a child for ever." These, therefore, 



