bards, its poets, its grand masters of the quill, the chisel and the
brush, has not on record such another career as has been blighted in
its bloom each time the stern death-angel stood beside an infant's
cot.

And, if there are evils in our day which no human power can baffle or
subdue, with which reason and morals are struggling in vain, we must
not forget, as we dwell upon them, what the possible, nay even
probable mission was, of each little pair of dimpled hands that he
crossed on each still unheaving bosom, wherein might have been buried
secrets and mysteries which the world will now never know.

Yet, methinks, this transit from the cradle to the coffin is not so
sad in all its bearings as that other death of childhood, which
introduces us, not into a safe and definite eternity, but only into
another phase of temporal life; when the toys and the picture books
are stowed away, when the mind and heart are awakening in their
beautiful, untarnished susceptibility to the impressions of a world of
perils and of sorrows.

Not unlike our final passage is it either, for we go through it once,
and once only, and from its threshold our footsteps are directed
towards good or evil, for after-life. Let us remember this always,
when we are tempted to pass our rigid judgments upon our
fellow-creatures. Let us not lose sight of these occult impediments of
fate, that may have caused our fallen brother to halt and stagger in
the way of righteousness almost in spite of his watchfulness and eager
intentions to do what is good.

Without wearying the reader with a detailed account of that period of