THE CHILD A PHILOSOPHER.

Filling from time to time his "humorous stage"
With all the persons down to palsied age,
That life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation

Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity;

Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deep and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the Eternal mind,—
Mighty Prophet, Seer blest!

On whom those truths do rest,

Which we are toiling all our lives to find:
Thou, over whom thy Immortality,
Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave,
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave

Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,

A place of thought where we in waiting lie!
Thou little child, yet glorious in the might
Of untamed pleasures, on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,-
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?

Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

Oh joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That Nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benedictions; not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of Childhood, whether fluttering or at rest,
With new-born hope for ever in his breast:
Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;

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But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;

Blank misgivings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts, before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish us, and make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence: truths that wake
To perish never:

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy

Can utterly abolish or destroy!

Hence in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither;

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore..

Then sing ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!

We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight;

Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;

CONSOLATION.

In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death;
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And oh! ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves,
Think not of any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped, lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born day
Is lovely yet;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun,
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

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The Circumcision of Christ.

JANUARY 1.

HE day on which we at present commemorate the Circumcision of our Lord has a singular, if not unique, history amongst the "observable times "

of the Church. Although from its earliest celebration regarded as a festival, it exhibited for a considerable time the outward phenomena of a fast; its observances being of a severe and penitential, rather than of a jubilant character. And for this there was good reason. The riot and license which, by the heathen world, were carried over from the Saturnalia-commencing about the seventeenth of December-to the calends of January, were so scandalous and extravagant as to force on Christian policy, no less. than on Christian duty, the necessity of an active or a passive opposition. In the earlier life of the Church, the abstinence of her members from the pagan abominations of the season was nearly all that was possible; but, as her strength and influence increased, her teachers rose with. these to the indignant height of protest, rebuke, and denunciation. The writings of the Fathers abound in severe invectives against the indecent and superstitious revelry of the day; and some of them are the fiercer in their wrath against it, that its excesses were not always confined to the unbaptized. St. Augustine, Peter Chrysologus, Maximus Taurinensis, and Faustinus the Bishop, amongst others,

THE HEATHEN SATURNALIA.

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reprobated the prevailing riot of the calends of January, which, many years before their times, St. Chrysostom had indignantly described as iopriv diaßoλiny, the Devil's Festival.

On this day especially, as throughout the Saturnalia, under the pretence of temporarily reviving the glories and immunities of the golden age, the attempt was made to resolve the order of society back into the elements of primæval chaos. In order to do honour to Janus, or Dianus, the god of the sun, the heathen, as the Fathers scornfully pointed out, feigned him to have two faces, of which one seemed to look back upon the past, whilst the other looked forward to the opening year. It was thus that stupid devotees, in their abortive attempts to fashion a god, succeeded in achieving a monstrosity, to which, at this season, some of them paid in their own persons the tribute of imitation. Others degraded themselves to the adoption of lower forms of life than their own; and, clothing themselves in the skins of cattle or of wild beasts, and assuming the heads of these, "rejoiced and exulted that they could no longer be recognised as human beings." Such voluntary degradation, it was said, proved the nature of the revellers to be more debased than that of the animals whose form or appearance they adopted. Further, men, putting off the vigour and roughness of their sex, masqueraded in the robes of women; whilst women, divesting themselves of their proper modesty and shame, blushed not to disport themselves in the garments of men. On the calends of January the superstitious consultation of auguries was pursued with an uncommon ardour; and people indulged freely in the interchange of "diabolical" strene, or new year's gifts.

*

It was the observance of the calends of January "by

*So called from Strena, or Strenua, a goddess who divided with Janus the doubtful honours of the day. Her name is still preserved in the étrennes, or gifts, which it is the custom in France to exchange on le Jour de l'An.