when their defied tyrants are dejected.

For though the natural spirit of children is happy, the happiness is a
mere impulse and is easily disconcerted. They are gay without knowing
any very sufficient reason for being so, and when sadness is, as it were,
proposed to them, things fall away from under their feet, they are
helpless and find no stay. For this reason the merriest of all children
are those, much pitied, who are brought up neither in a family nor in a
public home by paid guardians, but in a place of charity, rightly named,
where impartial, unalterable, and impersonal devotion has them in hand.
They endure an immeasurable loss, and are orphans, but they gain in
perpetual gaiety; they live in an unchanging temperature. The separate
nest is nature's, and the best; but it might be wished that the separate
nest were less subject to moods. The nurse has her private business, and
when it does not prosper, and when the remote affairs of the governess go
wrong, the child receives the ultimate vibration of the mishap.

The uniformity of infancy passes away long before the age when children
have this indefinite suffering inflicted upon them; and they have become
infinitely various, and feel the consequences of the cares of their
elders in unnumbered degrees. The most charming children feel them the
most sensibly, and not with resentment but with sympathy. It is
assuredly in the absence of resentment that consists the virtue of
childhood. What other thing are we to learn of them? Not simplicity,
for they are intricate enough. Not gratitude; for their usual sincere
thanklessness makes half the pleasure of doing them good. Not obedience;
for the child is born with the love of liberty. And as for humility, the
boast of a child is the frankest thing in the world. A child's natural
vanity is not merely the delight in his own possessions, but the triumph
over others less fortunate. If this emotion were not so young it would