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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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< Is that / thought Fjor en ^ 'v th ^< tempttnij 5 n tvWoh ihme badding creatures ought to have ? She is herself a specimen < rf » rthe stultifying power # tf settle wodfes of traifting ; ' for nature ^ ever gave to eveA the desert or the -wild a thing so soulless !' In the mid&t of these reflections , Florence saw two or three
other nursery-maids * with a little charge a-piece , join the attendants of the young Vernons . Immediately the young women fell into eager converse with each other ; and the children in their arms , or hanging by their dresses , looked up and listened to their discourse * or cried upon being compelled to stand stilL
What was the conversation of those young women ? Was it probable , was it possible , that it could be the moral nourishment neeessttry for the infant creatures by whom they were surrounded ? The most likely topics of these domestics were the affairs of tiie
families in which they respectively lived , the characters of tha individuals they served , and all their own loves and jealousies * sus picions , hopes , and fears . Much of all this their little companions , probably > did tiot understand ; but then so much the more it tended to the confusion and distortion of the infant mind .
Besides , so tertacious is the young memory , that a child will retain even that which it does not understand , and with ripened years will comprehend what it had at first only recollected . .-Florence broke up the menial conference by joining the young Vernons * among whom she took the despised little Frank by the hand . He was ( probably owing to the treatment he had met )
the least prepossessing of the children . But , shy and sullen as he was , Florence succeeded so well in exciting , amusing , and winning hin ^ that when they returned home he resolutely resisted being taken from her , till Barnes appeared , who conquered him by superior violence . In vain Florence asked to have his manage * ment , in this instance , confided to her ; the dove could not more
vainly plead to the winds which stripped the bough on which she was perched . Barnes at once feared and hated Florence . In looking for a cause for the spontaneous kindliness which distin ' guished the young governess , it . had occurred to Barnes , that Miss Pa get aimed at placing some creature of her own about the children . This idea no sooner occurred 4 han it was adopted , and
Barnes resolved not merely to prevent any intercourse between Florence and the children , but to take the first opportunity of prejudicing Mrs . Vernon ' s mind against the former . Oh , that the little ones of the world could speak for themselves 1 that in this great hurly-burly of contending interests the * * still small voi&e' of childhood , aa well as conscience , could be heard I Both
weufcl alike forbid the present procedure . Mankind are like hounds on a false scent , hunting for that which they do not find ; and shall we weiider that the pack ptt »» unheedirigly the little flower * of human vtatupa , often , unwittingly pefhapsy trampling and injuring them ? Who that # efle < rt * but is conmitooedof the
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1835, page 311, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2645/page/19/
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