why should it not? Now do not think me another Herod for I do not wish sucklings to be sent out of the world in his fashion ; but I never could understand the extreme sorrow which mothers

in general evince at the death of very young infants; "Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted." The absolute uncertainty of a child's lot, if spared, and the certainty (as I take it) that all dying in their cradles are nurslings of heaven; not only snatched from much suffering and temptation, but made happy in Him who has "redeemed them" to Himself, who on earth so expressly challenged them for His own, and who, I doubt not, will welcome them to Paradise, is sufficient to reconcile my mind to their death. Why should we grudge them their early rest, or wish to postpone it; nay, as far as we can see, endanger it, by keeping them here? When our Saviour was on earth, mothers pressed with their infants to let them be encircled in those loving arms, and have His hand rest upon their little heads one moment. Why should they repine that He takes them from their unsafe guardianship, and folds them in the "everlasting " for ever? that they are gone where they are to know only good without evil, and joy, but never sorrow?

arms

But it is hard to get any mother to subscribe to this sound doctrine; they won't believe that a little one of theirs has aught but a bright life before him; and I dare say Madam Eve never for a moment dreamt that little Master Cain could come to any ill.

It may be morbid, - I dare it is, but I never could look say on childhood's green leaf without thinking of the sear of autumn, and mourning that it should live to reach it. "Time that spoils all things," says Cowper, "will turn my kitten into a cat ;" or as Bishop Earle says of the young child — “The older he is, he is a stair lower from God, and, like his first father, much worse in his breeches." I feel with the good old humourist "Could the child put off his body with his child's coat, he had got eternity without a burden, and exchanged but one heaven for another."

For my part, I fancy I should not grieve if the whole race of mankind died in its fourth year. "If that were the case," you will say, "the human race would die out in the next generation."

Very true; and as far as we can see, I do not know that it would be a thing much to be lamented; but since it is not His will, who permits this world of sin and sorrow to continue, it becomes us to believe, though we cannot see, that it is for the best.

I have often thought that if (as I think the New Testament and reason equally teach us, maugre the opinion of some uncharitable fathers who thought the contrary), all, who die infants, are young denizens of heaven, we may look with somewhat mitigated horror even on one of the worst practices of the heathen, though, as usual, the undesigned consequences do not make their actions the less atrocious. Infanticide, we may well hope, has peopled heaven with myriads upon myriads of happy immortals, who, if they had grown up, would have worn scalps at their girdles, and been devout worshippers of the great "Tonguataboo,” or some such divine monster. The Arch-enemy has in this case outwitted himself; he has been rendering heaven more populous, much against his will; hounding into the everlasting fold the young lambs of the flock, who would otherwise have lost themselves on the dark "mountains." "The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel;" it is well that sometimes his cruelties should undesignedly turn out merciful.

In serious earnest, however, I think that of all calamities Providence visits us with, the loss of an infant a few days old is, with the New Testament in our hands, about the most tolerable. That cup has but a very slight tincture of the waters of Marah; others require skilful infusion of all the ingredients of the Gospel to turn them into a cup of thanksgiving overcome their intense bitterness. But do not tell Charlotte this or she will certainly think me hard-hearted.

or even

I rejoice that you have got fifty pounds for your "Dispensary" from so unexpected a source. I can hardly believe that you are not jesting with me. Surely you must have had the old miser at some advantage, given you by your art; perhaps he thought himself at death's door, and you secretly threatened, — if he did not do the handsome thing, to let him die unaided by pro

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fessional skill. Would that be an evil? some calumniators of your art might say.

I can assure you I feel much as Fontenelle did, when Regnier, secretary of the French Academy, was collecting subscriptions of the members for some common object, and inadvertently applied to the President Roses (who was an old miser) a second time. He said he had paid. "I believe you," politely said Regnier, "though I did not see it;""and I," said Fontenelle, “though I saw it, do not believe it.'

Your miserly patient in the complacency with which he gloats on his successful speculations, and recounts his acts of saving as if they were highly virtuous, reminds me of an old Lancashire gentleman who lived and died under a similar delusion. "Yes,"said he, with much gravity to a worthy clergyman who was visiting him, and enlarging on the use of the talents committed to us, "yes, sir, very true; God has given all of us our talents, which must be diligently employed. I trust it has been my own case; he has given me, I know, a talent for business, and I have a humble hope that I have not hidden it in a napkin." "A word spoken in season, how good is it!" "So let your light shine before men!"

The utter unconsciousness of the old miser that he had said any thing ridiculous, must have put the gravity of the spiritual adviser

to a severe test.

I remember reading a clever epigram, I think of Herder, on the man who " had hidden the single talent," and "returned his lord's money; it is very happy; but I cannot recall it. I only remember that it felicitously hits off the sordid temper of the man, and his rigorous sense of meum and tuum; for he takes care in unwrapping the talent to reclaim the-handkerchief!

"Take that is-thine,

The handkerchief is mine."

Yours ever,

R. E. H. G.

LETTER VIII.

To the same.

London, Aug. 1839.

My dear Mason,

I am rejoiced to find that the fifty pounds' donation was a "spontaneous" act, and that your art had nothing to do with it. Wonders will never cease; at least let us hope so; this, the first of the series, is at all events a staggerer. But He who made the rock pour forth water to cheer the desert withal, can no doubt make even the heart of a miser,-the nether mill-stone is pumicestone to it, soft and tender.

Certainly there is no one passion of man so enthralling as the love of money; nor was it without a profound knowledge of the depths of the human heart, that those ominous words were spoken, "How hardly shall they that have riches —!” I have often endeavoured to account to myself, speculatively, for the peculiar intensity of this, so childish a passion; for money is really of no use the moment the miser gets hold of it. This curious idolater is content to deprive his god of the only attribute it possesses, and to live without the very things, the power of purchasing which is its solitary prerogative! I have often, I say, speculated upon the folly, but I have never been able fully to satisfy myself. It is worse than the worship of the dead; there, in theory at least, the incense is offered not to the deserted shrine of the departed spirit, but to the spirit itself, ad æthera latum; here it is to the mere mortal cerement of gold, which has been stripped of its only use, robbed of its only power; it has been voluntarily thus divested, so that the fool actually kills his god, and then falls down and adores it!

Is it that, as the love of gold itself is what moralists call a "secondary" passion, a passion transferred from the object symbolised to the symbol itself, men are permitted, as in the instances of perverted desires and unnatural appetite, to punish themselves by more miserable dotage than ever the natural passion

or appetite is likely to fall into? Is it that, as all acquired tastes are stronger than natural ones, this follows the same law? Is it that, as it is usually of slow growth, but of life-long continuance, the strength of habit is simply proportioned to the length of indulgence and the frequency of impression? Is it that, as it gets stronger and stronger as other passions decay, it engrosses and monopolises all the remaining energies of our nature to itself? Is it that, as it usually obtains its full dominion as our minds get feebler, there is less power in the declining faculties to resist and control it, and so the whole soul falls into a childish, all but idiotic, submission to it? Or is its ascendancy due to all or several of these things combined? I know not; but certainly of all the mysteries of our pitiable humanity, none is more profound than is presented in the spectacle of a miser clothed in rags, dwelling in squalid want, depriving himself of the ordinary comforts of life, yet gloating with insane delight over that worthless gold, which he has first divested of all its activity, and then gives it its apotheosis! Such a worshipper certainly makes a great sacrifice; for he sacrifices himself and his god too to the fervour of his adoration.

Your old acthough it will

The soul of

I heard of a sad "night-scene" the other day, which would do as an accompaniment to your "morning-scene!" quaintance's soul is, I hope, opening to the dawn, be a late wintry morning, and a brief day at best. the unhappy mortal of whom I speak closed to the light in midday; that is, he closed his own shutters, by which any man may make night when he pleases. It is a striking example of the power of riches, or fancied riches; for here everything is by comparison. He was a young man in the receipt of a decent salary in some merchant's office, just enough to provide him with every comfort and some luxuries; but nothing to spare "worth saving," as we say. He was liberal to the full measure of his ability, and brought out his guinea to religious and benevolent objects as freely as any. He had a bequest from a distant relative (some three or four thousand pounds, I believe), suddenly left him. Now mark the sequel, and see what a fool human na