KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



273 



THE INNOCENCE OF CHILDHOOD. 



When Heaven and angels, earth and earthly things, 

 Do leave the guilty in their guiltiness,— 

 A cherub's voice doth whisper in a child's, 

 There is a shrine within that little heart, 

 Where I will hide ; nor hear the trump of doom. 



AlATUHJN. 



Oh, life! how pleasant is thy morning! 



Rogers. 



HILDREN ARE BUT LITTLE 



people, YET they form a very 

 important part of society, ex- 

 pend much of our capital, em- 

 ploy a great portion of our 

 population in their service, and 

 occupy half the literati of our 

 day in labors for their instruction and 

 amusement. They cause more trouble and 

 anxiety than the national debt ; the loveliest 

 of women in her maturity of charms breaks 

 not so many slumbers, nor occasions so 

 many sighs as she did in her cradle ; and 

 the handsomest of men, with full-grown 

 mustachios and Stultz for his tailor, must 

 not flatter himself that he is half so much 

 admired as he was when in petticoats. 



Without any reference to their being our 

 future statesmen, philosophers, and magis- 

 trates in miniature disguise, children form, 

 in their present state of pigmy existence, a 

 most influential class of beings ; and the 

 arrival of a mewling infant who can scarcely 

 open its eyes, and only opens its mouth, like 

 an unfledged bird, for food, will effect the 

 most extraordinary alteration in a whole 

 household ; substitute affection for coldness, 

 duty for dissipation, cheerfulness for gravity, 

 bustle for formality ; unite hearts which 

 time had divided, soften feelings which the 

 world had hardened, teach women of fashion 

 to criticise pap, and grave metaphysicians to 

 crawl upon all fours. 



It is not only to their parents and near 

 connexions that children are interesting 

 and delightful ; they are general favorites, 

 and their caresses are slighted by none 

 but the strange, the affected, or the mo- 

 rose. Even men may condescend to sport 

 with children without fear of contempt ; 

 and for those who like to shelter them- 

 selves under authority, and cannot venture 

 to be wise and happy their own way, we 

 have plenty of splendid examples, ancient 

 and modern, living and dead, to adduce, 

 which may sanction a love for these pigmy 

 playthings. Statesmen have romped with 

 them; orators told them stories; conquerors 

 submitted to their blows ; judges, divines, 

 and philosophers listened to their prattle 

 and joined in their sports. 



Spoiled children (Legion f) are, however, 

 excepted from this partiality. Every one 

 joins in visiting the faults of others upon 

 their heads, and hating these unfortunate 

 victims of their parents' folly. They must 



be bribed to good behavior, like many of 

 their elders; they insist upon fingering 

 your watch, and spoiling what they do not 

 understand. Like numbers of the patrons 

 of literature and the arts, they will some- 

 times cry for the moon as absurdly as Alex- 

 ander for more worlds ; and when they are 

 angry, they have as little mercy for cups and 

 saucers as I have for a travelling Italian 

 organ-grinder. They are as unreasonable, 

 impatient, selfish, exacting, and whimsical as 

 grown-up men and women ; and only want 

 the varnish of politeness and mask of hypo- 

 crisy, to complete the likeness. In short, 

 they display to all their acquaintance those 

 faults of character which their wiser elders 

 show only to their family and dependents. 



Another description of children de- 

 servedly unpopular, is the over-educated and 

 super- excellent, who despise dolls and drums, 

 read only for instruction, have no wish for a 

 holiday, no fancy for a fairy-tale. They are 

 the representatives of the old-fashioned, ex- 

 tinct class, who used to blunder through 

 Normal's speech, or Satan's address to the 

 Sun ; but far more perseveringly tiresome, 

 more unintermittingly dull than their prede 

 cessors. The latter excited your compas- 

 sion by bearing the manner of victims ; and 

 when their task was over, were ready for a 

 ride upon your foot, a noisy game at play, 

 or a story about an ogress. But the modern 

 class appear to have a natural taste for 

 pedantry and precision ; their wisdom never 

 indulges in a nap, at least before company ; 

 they have learned the Pestalozzi system, and 

 weary you with questions. They require 

 you to prove everything you assert, and are 

 always on the watch to detect you in a 

 verbal inaccuracy, or a slight mistake in a 

 date. Indeed, it is not a little annoying, 

 when you are whiling away the time before 

 dinner in that irritable state which precedes 

 an Englishman's afternoon meal, tired per- 

 haps by business or study, and wishing for a 

 few minutes' relaxation preparatory to the 

 important tasks of repletion and digestion, 

 to find your attempts at playfulness and 

 trifling baffled in all directions. Turning 

 from the gentlemen to avoid the Funds, 

 Nero Napoleon the French Emperor, or the 

 New Ministry ; driven from your refuge 

 among the ladies by phrenology, or the 

 lectures at the Royal Institution, you fly to a 

 group of children, in hopes of a game at 

 play, or an interchange of nonsense, and find 

 yourself beset by critics and examiners, re- 

 quired to attend to Lindley Murray's rules, to 

 brush up your geographical and chronologi- 

 cal knowledge ; and, instead of a demand 

 upon your imagination for a story, or your 

 foot for a ride, you are called upon to give 

 an account of the Copernican system or the 

 Peloponnesian war. 



Vol. III.— 18. 



