"
Grant that this may be a little abated, because a very serious man is not
to be too much believed when he is describing what he admires; it is the
very fact of his admiration that is so curious a sign of those hasty
times. All being favorable, the child of Evelyn's studious home would
have done all these things in the course of nature within a few years. It
was the fact that he did them out of the course of nature that was, to
Evelyn, so exquisite. The course of nature had not any beauty in his
eyes. It might be borne with for the sake of the end, but it was not
admired for the majesty of its unhasting process. Jeremy Taylor mourns
with him "the strangely hopeful child," who--without Comenius's "Janua"
and without congruous syntax--was fulfilling, had they known it, an
appropriate hope, answering a distinctive prophecy, and crowning and
closing a separate expectation every day of his five years.
Ah! the word "hopeful" seems, to us, in this day, a word too flattering
to the estate of man. They thought their little boy strangely hopeful
because he was so quick on his way to be something else. They lost the
timely perfection the while they were so intent upon their hopes. And
yet it is our own modern age that is charged with haste!
It would seem rather as though the world, whatever it shall unlearn, must
rightly learn to confess the passing and irrevocable hour; not slighting
it, or bidding it hasten its work, nor yet hailing it, with Faust, "Stay,
thou art so fair!" Childhood is but change made gay and visible, and the
world has lately been converted to change.
Pages:
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29