the bride of Duke Albert of Brunswick, and many similar pieces of handicraft, came out of the same workshop. Henry also took pleasure in pictures. The same Edward Fitz-Odo received the minutest instructions for adorning the walls of the royal apartments in Westminster and Windsor; and it is very remarkable that so early as the year 1239 he received on one occasion the sum of £117, 10s., in order to furnish himself with oil and colours for this purpose, and that he might paint the chamber of the Queen with pictures of the four evangelists. In his own room Henry ordered him to paint two great lions, and above them the four evangelists. For the chapel in Wind representation of the wise and foolish virgins, and other subjects from the Old and New Testament, are commissioned, and for St. Stephen's, in Westminster, a beautiful picture of the Virgin and the portraits of the King and Queen. A whole list of English painters is mentioned, and somewhat later we hear of a monk William who painted in Windsor, and who is said to have been a Florentine." We have not mentioned, in the preceding pages, several valuable contributions to this portion of our history which have recently appeared in France. Any review of M. Guizot's numerous labours on the constitutional history of England would, of course, have led us into political speculations which were beyond the scope of our present design. We did intend, however, to have called the attention of our readers to M. de Bonnechose's" Quatre Conquêtes de l'Angleterre," a work which has done more than any other to correct the many errors to which M. Thierry's whims regarding the long continued alienation of Saxons and Normans had given currency. According to M. Thierry's view, (which seems scarcely to have come from a more recondite source than an exaggerated recollection of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe,) the Norman conquest was to be likened rather to the conquest of the Spaniards in South America than to anything to which the history of Europe furnishes a parallel; and the incongruity of the two nationalities which were then brought together to be regarded as so obstinate as to endure even to the present day. M. Bonnechose has adopted the opinion, in which all the better English and German authorities had preceded him, that the fusion, which an all but common origin of race must have greatly facilitated, took place with a rapidity which, considering the difference in language and manners which unquestionably existed between the two peoples, even this fact would scarcely have led us to anticipate. Books for Children. 399 ART. IV.-1. Robinson Crusoe. 2. The Arabian Nights' Entertainments. 3. Esop's Fables. 4. The Story of Reynard the Fox. 5. Gulliver's Travels. 6. Tales of the Genii. 7. Frank. 8. The History of Sandford and Merton. 9. The Pilgrim's Progress. 10. Social Tales for the Young. By Mrs. SHERWOOD. London, 1837. 11. The History of the Fairchild Family; or, The Child's Manual. By Mrs. SHERWOOD. Fifteenth Edition. London, 1845. 12. The History of Henry Milner, a Little Boy not brought up according to the Fashion of this World. By Mrs. SHERWOOD. Sixth Edition. London, 1845. 13. Amy Herbert. Edited by the Rev. W. SEWELL. London, 1844. 14. Agathos and other Stories. By BISHOP WILBERFORCE. Eleventh Edition. London, 1846. 15. The Distant Hills. By the Rev. W. ADAMS. London, 1849. 16. The Cherry Stones; or, Charlton School. A Tule for Youth. By the Rev. W. ADAMS. London, 1853. 17. The Four Seasons. By DE LA MOTTE FOUQUE. London, 1846. 18. Danish Fairy Legends and Tales. By CHRISTIAN HANS ANDERSEN. Second Edition. London, 1852. 19. Hope on! Hope Ever! By MARY HOWITT. London, 1852. 20. Ministering Children. A Tale dedicated to Childhood. London, 1854. 21. Margaret Cecil. Edinburgh, 1854. DR. JOHNSON used to say, that a boy at school is the happiest of human beings. If he had added, that youth is not only the happiest period of life, but also the best, in the highest sense of the word, perhaps there would not be given so general a consent as to the maxim which he has enunciated. Graceful, engaging, interesting, every one would allow it to be. The dewy freshness of the morning, the soft fragrance of spring, the tender beauty of a budding flower are the images that naturally belong to that stage of existence. But, then, it is wanting, it might be urged, in the tried virtue and balanced judgment of experience. The comparison is not an easy one. To take a parallel case. It is always difficult to weigh the merits and de merits of one period in the world's history against those of another. The passionate excesses and heroic impulses of a partially civilized age, can scarcely be reduced to a common standard with the stereotyped characters of modern life, with its level average of conventional decorum. Each period in its place serves the ordained purpose; and so it is well. The peculiar development of each is providentially adapted to the circumstances which are at once its cause and effect. And so it is, if we attempt to form a just comparison of Youth with Manhood. Unreasonable, indeed, it were to wish for fullborn manhood in the boy; scarcely less so to desire, in this life, to arrest the fleeting graces of youth, and fix them in perpetual childhood. The gradual change, mournful as it is to witness, the fading bloom of gentle unsuspicious innocence, the cold numbness stealing over the generous instincts, instead of awakening vain and querulous repinings, may serve rather to impress that life is moving on to its full development. All that is fair must fade, in order that it may be renewed in richer loveliness. While it lasts let it be admired for its intrinsic qualities, as it deserves. Assuredly, if the wisdom of intuition transcends the discursive. travailings of the understanding; if the princely innocence" that thinketh no evil," more nearly approaches the Divine nature, than virtue dimmed and soiled in the conflict with sin; if strong Hope, and undoubting Faith, and stintless Charity, are the especial prerogatives of youth, then it must be allowed that the period of childhood presents to us no faint foreshadowing of the beatific life that is to come hereafter. "The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath elsewhere had its setting, And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But, trailing clouds of glory, do we come, Heaven lies about us in our infancy !" Persons advanced, or advancing in life, and particularly those whose occupations involve them in the exciting pursuit of power or riches, are apt to look down upon youth as an unprofitable time, as a mere preliminary to real life, to be despatched with all convenient speed, and then to be forgotten. They are not aware how much they have need to learn from it, and to sympathize with it. It is very good for all to dwell much in the presence of the young. The greatest and best of men have loved to do so. The strange and unanswerable questions which children are continually asking, inadequate utterances of unutterable Recollections of Childhood. 401 thoughts, convict the proudest intellect of its ignorance. Their trustful and affectionate confidence in others rebukes the suspicious caution of experienced manhood. The unstudied grace of every "breeze-like notion," the gladsomeness of the "self-born carol," their free and full enjoyment of everything beautiful and glorious around them,-these, and such like traits, are angelic rather than human; they speak of innocence, and happiness, and love; they say to anxious hearts, "Take no thought for the morrow,"" Be not troubled about many things." Nor is boyhood an ineloquent teacher. Its generous ardour, its dauntless activity, its chivalrous sense of honour, its fond attachments, its hopefulness, and truthfulness, its clear bright eye, fair cheek, light and joyous frame,-how strangely unlike is all this to the wrinkled brow and heavy tread, the callousness and deliberate selfishness by which it is too often succeeded. Much, very much is to be learned from the young. It is to be regretted, that the recollections of childhood and youth in most persons so soon grow dim and perish,-obliterated from the heart by the noisy waves of active life,-that men can so seldom trace their way back to a very early time. In one sense, indeed, childhood is never forgotten. Love or ambition may usurp for a time a tyrannic sway over the heart, and seem to blot out all the time before; but, except in the wretched criminal, whose keenest pang of remorse is to compare himself with what he was once, the thought of the home of other days never fails to act like magic on the heart, the faces and haunts familiar to the child remain enshrined in the memory of the man, and command for ever an affectionate reverence. Those 66 Happy days, that were as long with each morrow, as it then seemed, severed from yesterday by Soft breezes, fraught with pure and peaceful recollections from those Isles of the Blest, thus soothe and refresh the heated brow of the way-worn traveller in the journey of life. But, if it were possible, how strangely interesting would be a voyage of discovery into those happy regions,-that "sunny land of childhood" through which we have travelled,-if memory could dis tinctly recall the first dawnings of intelligence, unravel the tangled web of thought and feeling which has baffled Locke and Descartes, and analyze the complex substance of the human mind into its primordial elements; or even if Biography were more careful to trace out the records of the first fifteen years of a human life. A wise judgment of the curious and very influential kind of literature suggested by the books enumerated at the head of this article, depends much on the correctness of the estimate that is formed of the moral and intellectual condition of those for whose benefit they are written, on our insight into childlife. Some of the peculiar traits of boyhood are often overlooked by those who cater for the instruction and amusement of that strangely interesting class. Hence some of the besetting dangers of the books for children now in vogue,-especially as these arise from premature intellectual cultivation, the encouragement of a morbid habit of self-consciousness, and the undue development of the reasoning, almost to the exclusion of the imaginative faculties. Education, in one form or other, should be the great question of every age, seeing that the cultivation of his race is surely the most important work in which man can be engaged. It is professedly the great question of these times; yet, amid much useful discussion of school-arrangements, and the methods of teaching, some of the less obvious aspects of the process of change, which is everywhere and incessantly going on in human minds, are, it seems, too much neglected. And the books by which they are amused and spontaneously educated are surely among the most powerful domestic influences to which children are exposed. This department of literature has worthily engaged writers of the highest intellect, who have known childhood well, and the habits and tastes of successive generations are formed by the fruit of their labours. Before attempting to answer the question, What sort of writing is best adapted for the young? another question accordingly must be entertained, What are their tastes and capacities? The warm and affectionate susceptibility of children, their noble aspirations, their confiding trust in others, and unselfish admiration of whatever is beautiful and good,―traits like these, with the counterpoise of such defects as restlessness, imprudence, appetency of pleasure and impatience of pain or restraint, are manifest at a glance. But there are phenomena less obtrusive, some of which, at first sight, appear scarcely reconcilable one with another. These ought to be considered; for, though from causes already alluded to, from the want of sympathy between old and young, and from the insidious assiduity with which the cares of the man imperceptibly obliterate the very different experiences |