CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



moonlight, dead -drunk on the gravel at the gate! 



Nay, start not, parental reader nor, in the terror 

 of anticipation, send, without loss of a single day, for 

 your son at a distant academy, mayhap pursuing even 

 such another career. Trust thou to the genial, gra- 

 cious, and benign vis medicatrix natures. What though 

 a few clouds bedim and deform "the innocent bright- 

 ness of the new-born day"? Lo! how splendid the 

 meridian ether! What though the frost seem to blight 

 the beauty of the budding and blowing rose? Look 

 how she revives beneath dew, rain, and sunshine, till 

 your eyes can even scarce endure the lustre! What 

 though the waters of the sullen fen seem to pollute 

 the snow of the swan ? They fall off from her expanded 

 wings, and, pure as a spirit, she soars away, and de- 

 scends into her own silver lake, stainless as the water- 

 lilies floating round her breast. And shall the immor- 

 tal soul suffer lasting contamination from the transient 

 chances of its nascent state in this, less favoured 

 than material and immaterial things that perish? No 

 it is undergoing endless transmigrations, every 

 hour a being different, yet the same dark stains 

 blotted out rueful inscriptions effaced many an 

 erasure of impressions once thought permanent, but 

 soon altogether forgotten and vindicating, in the 

 midst of the earthly corruption in which it is im- 

 mersed, its own celestial origin, character, and end, 

 [26] 



