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    < a quiet tune * at their feet , while all the birds are at their vespers in the neighbouring wood , and the setting sun looks as if his mighty heart were melting in tenderness within him , while he smiles on the scene his parting benediction . If the book be really a child ' s book , it must be for such a child as the spirit of the just made perfect becomes , in order to

    enter the kingdom of heaven . Only aright can it be understood , appreciated , and felt , in the nursery of the soul ' s regeneration . The pictorial beauties , and pretty fancies , and objective realities , with all the interest and love they generate in the little first-form people of humanity , and the deeper poetry and philosophy , not unmixed with the ruder stimulus of satiric allegory , and overspread with an all-covering mantle of loveliness , which may

    recreate the spirits of the bustling boys who are struggling through the world's curriculum ; these are only the outer covering ; and after this delicately tinted blossom , and within the leafy texture oi' this gracefully formed calyx , there is the inmost kernel of a psychological parable , enriched and adorned with various subordinate similitudes , allegorical hints or developements ,

    hieroglyphics , mythoi , and heavenly visions which are oracular to the child-spirit that upturns its meek and holy countenance to the descending light . We have transcribed the first chapter , and now if only following our inclinations , we should transcribe the second also , showing

    how the child sat by the gurgling brook , talking to the little waves , and asking them whence they came ; and how , while they danced away one over another without stopping to reply , a little drop of water rested behind a piece of rock , telling strange (histories , far better than the mystic purification which the Grecian ' Epicurean' borrowed of the Egyptian Sethos , ' for she told him about her former life among the depths of the mountains : and

    the third chapter , how the child dreamt of gloomy caverns , and of being in the clouds , and catching lambs of mist and vapour , as the moon ' s soft light lay on his eyelids ; while she lingered a long time before his little window , and went slowly away to lighten the dark chamber of some sick person . And the fourth chapter , showing the flowers in their airs , and the child justifying wisdom of her children , ' the tulips speaking their love in bri ght looks , and the hyacinth uttering hers in fragrant words : ' and the

    fifth chapter , the ramble in the wood , which fills the child ' s heart with joy even to t + ie brim , where ' the little birds warbled and sang , and fluttered and hopped about , and the delicate wood flowers gave out their beauty and their odours , and every sound took a sweet odour by the hand and thus walked through the open door of the child's heart , and held a joyous nuptial dance therein ; and the child set himself down , and almost thought he should like to take root there and live for ever among the sweet plants and flowers , and so become a true sharer in all their

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    The Story without an End . 73

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1834, page 73, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2629/page/75/