


KIDD’S OWN JOURNAL. 

OUTPOURINGS OF AFFECTION. 
ON THE BIRTH OF A DAUGHTER. 
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE NECKLACE.” 

Gop, I thank thee for the blessing 
Of a lot with mercy rife, 
For the babe my arm is pressing, 
For its mother’s precious life. 
Thou hast made that mother dearer, 
If a fonder tie could be, 
Since her love hath been the bearer 
Of so sweet a pledge to me. 
With thy mother’s tear of gladness, 
Still, my child, thy cheek is wet; 
Never may’st thou cause her saduess, 
Never bring her love regret. 
Oh! be thou the sweetest pleasure 
That her soul as yet hath found ; 
When she seeks affection’s treasure, 
Be thy heart prolific ground. 
When hopes perish, friends forsake thee, 
Pleasures pall, or joys decline, 
To a mother’s breast betake thee; 
’Tis of love a lasting mine. 
Springs of pleasure fresh and smiling 
There will flow, my child, for thee : 
Let not worldly streams defiling 
Mingle with their purity. 
Dost thou fear a father’s kisses, 
That thou turns’t thine eyes from me ? 
"Tis a fonder breast she misses ; 
Nature speaks, my abe, in thee. 
Go then, dear and tender blossom, 
Firstling of our little fold; 
Nestle in thy mother’s bosom— 
"Tis a clime can ne’er grow cold. 
Go, my love; I cannot chide thee 
That for hers thou leav’st my breast; 
Still when cares or joys have tried me, 
There has been my happiest rest. 
She has been earth’s richest dower, 
She my spirit’s priceless gem ; 
Fold thy tiny arms, sweet flower, 
Round thy dear and parent stem. 
God of mercy, who hast given 
This new link to bind our love, 
Kindly grant us light from Heaven, 
Worthy of our task to prove ! 
Give our tender cares thy blessing, 
Fill our hearts with grace divine; 
Let the babe our arms are pressing, 
Father—Mother—attu Be THrne ! 
OUR ENGLISH CLIMATE. 
THE MOIST AND FOGGY CLIMATE of 
England is proverbial with foreigners, and a 
matter of half-melancholy joke with English- 
men themselves. ‘The perpetual verdure of 
our fields bespeaks us denizens of a rainy 
zone—inhabitants of an intermitting shower- 
bath. Our speech betrayeth us; the 
weather is ever uppermost in our thoughts, 
and the first thing spoken of when friends 
meet. . 

335 

Aquarius is our constellation. The 
natives of such aclime might naturally be 
imagined as exempt from fear of rain as 
Mephistophiles alleges Faust ought to be 
from fear of fire. It is their element; which, 
they ought to know, cannot harm them or 
theirs. Yet they are as shy of rain as a 
kitten of dew, when it first ventures abroad 
of a morning. England is a land where 
short crops occasionally occur, but where the 
years of utter blight, which often lay other 
lands desolate, are scarcely known. Despite 
our frequent wet, raw, and ungenial summers, 
within the memory of our fathers and 
fathers’ fathers seed time and harvest have 
not failed. Yet to an Englishman a wet 
July immediately conjures up visions of 
famine, with pestilence and bankruptcies in 
its train. 
Burns was wrong when he said that they 
who are ‘ constantly on poortith’s brink” 
are little territied by the sight. It is only 
those who are steeped in it over head and 
ears who become resigned to their fate. It 
is in those to whom a chance of emerging 
seems still open, that the fear is strongest ; to 
which the thoughtless Dives and the des- 
perate Lazarus are alike inaccessible. And 
so with Englishmen and the weather. Were 
their climate one in which no corn could 
grow, they would never think of crops; and 
were it so genial that the crops were always 
redundant, they wonld wax insensible to 
the blessing from sheer excess. But, living 
in a region to which hope ever comes, and 
from which fear never entirely departs, they 
abandon themselves too readily to unmanly 
fears. They are weather valetudinarians, a 
nation of Gratianos—‘“the wind cooling 
their broth blows them to an ague.” 
One thing, however, is certain,—viz., that 
although the climate 7s so changeable, and 
rains pour down so incessantly, yet do 
Englishmen and English crops, like English 
frogs, take a great deal of drowning ! 
EARLY IMPRESSIONS. 
CHILDHOOD’S INNOCENCE, 
I WILL NOT FLATTER YOU, my dear sir, 
by telling you in what repute you are held in 
Devonshire (perhaps you already have heard 
of it),—suffice it, that whatever you say is 
received here with more than common favor 
and interest. 
’ Your former remarks on “‘A Child’s Heart” 
(see vol. i1i., page 209), and your more recent 
extensive observations upon children (scat- 
tered over very many pages of OUR JOURNAL), 
induce me to send you the following, which 
(we all think here) deserve a place in your 
“pleasant pages.” 
The present mode of educating children 
is, as you remark, barbarous indeed! The 
