in our mouths, and will travel securely down to futu rity from her having imparted it to a humble flower. What a triumph for nature!-I always keep some of these historical plants by me :-their hoar leaves tell a more affecting tale than that inscribed by Apollo on the petals of the hyacinth. Ingenuity has been exhausted in varying contrivances to defraud oblivion. Doggett has clothed his memory in a waterman's coat and badge; while another actor serves up the embalmed mummy of his name in a twelfth cake, to be annually devoured in the green-room. But the substance is soon lost in the shadow-the symbol recalls no recollection of the original; nothing remains but the name of a nonentity, and what is this worth ?-Bucephalus perpetuated his name, as well as Alexander; the incendiary of Diana's temple eternised his, though it was forbidden to be uttered, while that of its first builder is lost. Vice, indeed, and folly, have better chances of immortality than virtue and wisdom; for the former only are registered in our Courts and Calends; and as blood and misery are the materials with which history builds, one destroyer of mankind shall outlast fifty benefactors. The Chinese have no annals, for they have had no wars. Poor-spirited wretch that I am! -no circumstances could have made me a hero, for, with shame I confess it, I would rather be a forgotten philosopher, than a remembered tyrant. Poets have a much more substantial existence after death. The "non omnis moriar" is not altogether a vain boast; their minds actually survive: we are con versant with their thoughts, words, and actions; we see a whole and consistent character, disembodied, indeed, but still sufficiently vital to become companionable, and to participate in a species of communion between the living and the dead. But, alas! how quickly "comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears," and cuts off, for us moderns at least, even this precarious tenure. Only 420 years have elapsed since the death of Chaucer, and his dialect has become obsolete, even before his monument has quite decayed, -though that, too, is in a forlorn plight, and I would cheerfully subscribe towards its restoration, were it only for his having beaten a Franciscan Friar in Fleetstreet. Gower, his contemporary, sleeps in St. Saviour's, Southwark, with his three great works under his head, where, and where only, their titles are still read: nor will that be practicable much longer; for, though his tomb was repaired only thirty years ago, it is again, from the dampness of its situation, hurrying to oblivion. The most popular of the moderns must soon become antiquated ;-it is the dead languages only that live. Children alone can perform the seemingly inconsistent office of sweetening both life and death; throwing a charm over existence, and making "the foul ugly phantom" approach, like the destroyer of Hipparchus, with triumphant garlands around his weapon. Children are the best living possession and posthumous existence; and how delightful, as well as beneficial. What a beautiful mystery is a child! How awful in its incomprehensibility;-how enchanting an essence of human nature, with all its virtues full blown, and its vices and imperfections undeveloped. They are the offspring of heaven, and resemble their parent.-How intensely characteristic of the benignant Jesus was his exclamation, "Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven;" and can we conceive a happier heaven than the mind of a child, into whose paradise regret for the past, and dread for the future-those demons by which manhood is haunted-have not yet intruded; where every thing is an exquisite enjoyment of presentness, and the rolling panorama of the world is beheld with all the keen relish that faculties, in their highest state of susceptibility for delightful impressions, can derive from the raciness of perpetual novelty. Christianity has adopted one cordial and endearing emblem, which gracefully succeeds to the winged Aurelia of the ancients; I mean the cherubs' heads, engraved upon our tombs. I love to see them fluttering about, as if they were appointed to keep up the communication, and were ready to convey intelligence from one world to the other. As to the monumental scull, it is an offensive hieroglyphic of man; and the sculptured bones are but an unseemly type of the cross. Away with them! They who are happy enough to be parents, may find rejuveniscence without Medea's cauldron, or Saint Leon's forbidden compact, or the pregnant elixir of the alchemists. There is a blossoming of spring in the autumn of their life, a genuine second childhood, not feeble and fatuous, but vigorous and buoyant, when all the green associations of youth break out in full bloom from sympathy with their offspring. Then is it that we realize the delightful anticipation of the song, And when with envy Time transported Shall think to rob us of our joys, Children afford an excuse for business, as well as a plea for pleasure. When old Chinnery, of Fenchurchstreet, had realized a hundred thousand pounds, he was advised to retire from business, that he might enjoy himself—and be miserable. "I must take care of my children," was his reply; so he continued to do the only thing for which he was fitted, and, after many more laborious and prosperous seasons, died covered with years and plums. At Vauxhall, last summer, I met my grave and substantial neighbour, Frampton, who, with an air of some confusion at being detected in an enjoyment, assured me he had not been there before for many years, and only came then to give his children a treat. Mine, I am sure, give me a treat, when they enable me to shake my sides at Grimaldi's jokes, and laugh the wrinkles out of my heart. Cares come with them, too, it must be admitted; but it is better to have something to fear than nothing to hope. A father has no tædium vita; and he loves his children the better, when he considers them as the depositaries and concentrations of past anxieties. They exhilarate his life, smooth his pillow of death, and give even a domestic attraction to the grave, wherein he joins those that have gone before him, and waits for those that are to follow. In fact, he hardly dies;—the living transcripts of his face and figure are still moving upon the earth; his name survives, embodied in another self; his blood is still flowing through human veins, and may continue its crimson current till the great wheel shall stand still. What posthumous memorial so vital as this? But children are often wayward and mischievous, and it is not less painful than necessary to correct them. I cannot deny it; for unfortunately the proof is now before me; and all this presents a painful picture to a father. But is it nothing to anticipate the hour of reconciliation, when, with sparkling eyes, my children shall leap to my bosom? Is it nothing to know from experience that the tide of affection will gush more abundantly from this temporary interruption, and that I shall again be able to exclaim with old Dornton in the play" Who would not be a father?" Is it nothing that but I have described this happy moment till I can wait for its arrival no longer. God bless ye, my darlings; come to my arms at once! While I have been wiping my children's eyes and my own, one of those involuntary thoughts which shoot across the brain like meteors led me to ask, what might be the future fate and fortune of those whom I was embracing. Affecting speculation! Is it possible that these vivacious beings, bounding about in an intoxication of delight from the mere luxury of existence, can become old, and querulous, and paralytic, and crawl along upon crutches? Stale |