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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
< 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
Untitled Article
The Story without an End . 73
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Citation
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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/
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