128 



KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



beauty. Tn every department of nature, it is 

 that which most speedily decays. The flower 

 begins to die as soon as it is blown; and when 

 plucked, it withers immediately. The old grey 

 abbey has lasted for ages, but the beauty of its 

 decorations has all been disfigured. ; the finials 

 and the crockets are broken off the pinnacles, the 

 sculptured foliage is mutilated by violence, or 

 destroyed by moisture and decomposition; but the 

 majesty, the dignity of the ruin remains. It even 

 increases with age. It is so, also, with the bloom 

 of youth, and the wrinkle% of maturity and 

 declining years. The one is more dignified and 

 majestic than the other; but there are very few 

 who would not willingly exchange the dignity for 

 the beauty, the imperishable and the growing, for 

 the perishable and the declining. With time and 

 a well-spent life, we gain in dignity wdiat we lose 

 in beauty of person. We gain in influence, in 

 respectability, and power, in almost all that 

 ambition labors to attain to ; but the person 

 gradually resigns its physical, as the spirit clothes 

 itself with its moral and intellectual attraction. 

 A double and contrary movement is thus going on 

 in our natures. The spirit is growing whilst the 

 body is declining — the sensual nature weakens 

 with time, and the spiritual nature strengthens. 

 The one becomes old, and the other becomes 

 young with age. The universal interests which 

 the mature and intelligent mind ever feels in 

 nature, and her various works, is a youthful excite- 

 ment ; compared to that mere love of sport and fun 

 which is experienced by the young. The veteran 

 botanist will travel the fields with young men and 

 women, who will yawn with ennui whilst he is 

 elated, and almost intoxicated with excitement of 

 spirit. Every field that he visits, affords him new 

 subject for thought and satisfaction — every wild 

 flower that he plucks, is a text for an animated 

 discourse. The young people say that he is a 

 tiresome fellow, and they wish they were at home, 

 eating plum-pudding or dancing a quadrille ; but 

 that js because their spirits are old and torpid, and 

 require muscular excitement to rouse them from 

 their lethargy. He is the liveliest and the 

 youngest of the party in mind, though the oldest 

 in body. _ Even old people arrive at last at a 

 second childhood, which, in many respects, is more 

 beautiful than the first. The first childhood is all 

 for self. The infant must have everything. It 

 must have father's watch to knock about and break 

 — it must have sister's doll to disarrange or 

 destroy ;— it is " me, me, me," with the little child ; 

 and it is peevish and discontented when it is not 

 permitted to appropriate to itself whatsoever it 

 admires. The childishness of age is just the 

 reverse ; it appropriates nothing, but gives all — 

 it robs itself to bestow upon others. — Puss. 



< A Mother's Affection, — There is something in 

 sickness that breaks down the pride of manhood; 

 that softens the heart, and brings it back to the 

 feelings of infancy. Who that has languished, even 

 in advanced life, in sickness and despondency — who 

 that has pined on a weary bed, in the neglect and 

 loneliness of a foreign land — but has thought on 

 the mother " that looked on his childhood," that 

 smoothed his pillow, and administered to his help- 

 lessness ! Oh ! there is an enduring tenderness in- 

 the heart of a mother to a son, that transcends all 



other affections of the heart. It is neither to be 

 chilled by selfishness, nor daunted by danger, nor 

 weakened by worthlessncss, nor stifled byi ngrati- 

 tude. She will sacrifice every comfort to his con- 

 venience; she will surrender every pleasure to his 

 enjoyment; she will glory in his fame, and exult 

 in his prosperity. If adversity overtake him, he 

 will be the clearer to her by misfortune ; and if 

 disgrace settle upon his name, she will love and 

 cherish him. ivlore than this ; if all the world 

 beside cast him off, she will be all the world to 

 him. — Washington Irving. 



Crystal Brightness of the Northern Seas. — 

 Nothing, says a gentleman recently returned 

 from America, can be more surprising and beauti- 

 ful than the singular clearness of the water of the 

 Northern Seas. As we passed slowly over the sur- 

 face, the bottom, which was here in general of 

 white sand, was clearly visible from 20 to 25 

 fathoms. During the whole course of the tour I 

 made, nothing appeared to me so extraordinary as 

 the immense recesses of the ocean, unruffled by the 

 slightest breeze ; the gentle splashing of the oars 

 scarcely disturbing it Hanging over the gun- 

 whale of the boat with wonder and delight, I gazed 

 on the slow moving scene below. Where the 

 bottom was ,sandy, the different kinds of esterise, 

 echini, and even the smallest shells appeared at 

 the greatest depth, conspicuous to the eye ; and 

 the water seemed, in some measure, to have a 

 magnifying power, by enlarging the objects as a 

 telescope, and bringing them seemingly nearer. 

 Though moving on a level surface, it seemed al- 

 most as if we were ascending the height under us; 

 and wdien we passed over its summit, which rose 

 in appearance to within a few feet of our boat, and 

 came again to the descent which on this side was 

 suddenly perpendicular, and overlooking a watery 

 gulf as we passed gently over the point of it, — it 

 seemed almost as if we had thrown ourselves down 

 this precipice; the illusion, from the crystal clear- 

 ness of the deep, actually producing a sudden start. 

 — Helen W. 



Can Bats smell Danger at a Distance ? — A 

 statement made by the mate of the schooner Dew- 

 drop, of Whitby, which was recently wrecked at 

 Arbroath, would seem to answer the above ques- 

 tion in the affirmative. He says, the vessel had 

 for a long time been infested with thousands of 

 rats, but on the night before they left Hartlepool 

 on the recent fatal voyage, the whole vermin dis- 

 appeared ; not a single solitary rat being visible, 

 where a day before they might be seen by the 



dozen !— E'. W. 



A Hint to Barents. — My admiration of what you 

 have already expressed about Education, induces 

 me to send you the following from Brasers 

 Magazine. *' Education does not commence with 

 the alphabet. It begins with the mother's looks ; 

 with the father's nod of approbation, or a sign of 

 reproof. With a sister's gentle pressure of the 

 hand, or a brother's noble act of forbearance. With 

 hundreds of flowers in green and daisy meadows — 

 with bird.' nests, admired, but not touched. With 

 creeping ants, and almost-imperceptible emmets. 

 With humming bees and glass bee-hives — with 

 pleasant walks in shady lanes, — all tending to 

 mature acts of benevolence, and leading the mind 

 up to God Himself. — Fedelta, St. Leonard's. 



