104 CHILDREN AND FLOWERS. 



"The blind, the lame, and far the happiest they ! 

 The moping idiot, and the madman gay." 



Even amid our tears of pity'for poor Ophelia 

 we cannot help feeling in some degree rejoiced; 

 that her mind has become a blank, bearing no 

 record of her former woes and sufferings, so 

 that she can now find pleasure and amusement 

 in twining garlands and carolling songs, as in 

 the days of her childhood. As well might it be 

 said because the tunes of the ^Eolian harp are 

 wild and wandering, that it gives out no melody 

 to the touch of the soft breezes, as that the mind 

 of an idiot, which is moved by sudden impulses 

 and gusts of passion, responds not to those holy 

 influences, which the God of nature has scat- 

 tered through the material universe, and which 

 constitute " the poetry of existence." 



There are those, who tell us, that youth is 

 not the most happy period of existence ; that 

 the sorrows of childhood, though light in com- 

 parison with those we experience in after years, 

 are as weighty in proportion to the powers of 

 endurance that we then possess. They say : 



" 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view." 



