CIII.—CHILDREN—WHAT ARE THEY? JOHN NEAL. 1. What are children? Step to the window with me. The street is full of them. Yonder a school is let loose, and here, just within reach of our observation, are two or three noisy little fellows, and there another party mustering for play. Some are whispering together, and plotting so loudly and so earnestly as to attract everybody's attention, while others are holding themselves aloof, with their satchels gaping so as to betray a part of their plans for to-morrow afternoon, or laying their heads together in pairs for a trip to the islands. Look at them, weigh the question I have put to you, and then answer it as it deserves to be answered :—what are children? 2. To which you reply at once without any sort of hesitation, perhaps,-"Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined;" or "Men are but children of a larger growth;" or, peradventure, "The child is father of the man." And then perhaps you leave me, perfectly satisfied with yourself and with your answer, having "plucked out the heart of the mystery,” and uttered, without knowing it, a string of glorious truths. 3. Among the children who are now playing together, like birds among the blossoms of earth, haunting all the green shadowy places thereof, and rejoicing in the bright air, happy and beautiful creatures, and as changeable as happy, with eyes brimful of joy, and with hearts playing upon their little faces like sunshine upon clear waters; among those who are now idling together on that slope, or pursuing butterflies together on the edge of that wood, a wilderness of roses, you would see not only the gifted and the powerful, the wise and the eloquent, the ambitious and the renowned, the long-lived and the long-to-be-lamented of another age; but the wicked and the treacherous, the liar and the thief, the abandoned profligate and the faithless husband, the gambler and the drunkard, the robber, the burglar, the ravisher, the murderer, and the betrayer of his country. The child is father of the man. 4. Among them and that other little troop just appearing, children with yet happier faces and pleasanter eyes, the blossoms of the future,—the mothers of nations,—you would see the founders of states and the destroyers of their country, the steadfast and the weak, the judge and the criminal, the murderer and the executioner, the exalted and the lowly, the unfaithful wife and the broken-hearted husband, the proud betrayer and his pale victim, the living and breathing portents and prodigies, the embodied virtues and vices of another age and another world,—and all blaying together! Men are but children of a larger growth 5. Even fathers and mothers look upon children with a strange misapprehension of their dignity. Even with the poets, they are only the flowers and blossoms, the dewdrops or the playthings of earth. Yet "of such is the kingdom of heaven." The Kingdom of Heaven! with all its principalities and powers, its hierarchies, dominations, thrones! The Savior understood them better; to him their true dignity was revealed. Flowers! They are the flowers of the invisible world; indestructible, self-perpetuating flowers, each with a multitude of angels and evil spirits underneath its leaves, toiling and wrestling for dominion over it! 6. Blossoms! They are the blossom of another world, whose fruitage is angels and archangels. Or dew-drops! They are dew-drops that have their source, not in the chambers of the earth, nor among the vapors of the sky, which the next breath of wind or the next flash of sunshine may dry up forever, but among the everlasting fountains and inexhaustible reservoirs of mercy and love. Playthings! If the little creatures would but appear to us in their true shape for a moment! We should fall upon our faces before them, or grow pale with consternation or fling them off with horror and loathing. 7. Now to me there is no study half so delightful as that of these little creatures, with hearts fresh from the gardens of the sky, in their first and fairest and most unintentional disclosures, while they are indeed a mystery,-a fragrant, luminous, and beautiful mystery! 8. Then why not pursue the study for yourself? The subjects are always before you. No books are needed, no costly drawings, no lectures, neither transparencies nor illus trations. Your specimens are all about you. They come and go at your bidding. They are not to be hunted for along the edge of a precipice, on the borders of the wilderness, in the desert, nor by the sea-shore. They abound, not in the uninhabited or unvisited place, but in your very dwellinghouses, about the steps of your doors, in every street of every. village, in every green field, and every crowded thoroughfare. CIV. THE BRAVE AT HOME. THOMAS B. READ. 1. The maid who binds her warrior's sash One starry tear-drop hangs and trembles, And Fame shall never know her story,— 2. The wife who girds her husband's sword The bolts of war around him rattle,— Hath shed as sacred blood as e'er Was poured upon a field of battle. 3. The mother who conceals her grief When to her breast her son she presses, With no one but her secret God To know the pain that weighs upon her, Sheds holy blood as e'er the sod Received on Freedom's field of honor. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. CV.-ARMY HYMN. OLIVER W. HOLMES O Lord of Hosts! Almighty King! Wake in our breasts the living fires, Be Thou a pillared flame to show God of all nations! Sovereign Lord! From Treason's rent, from Murder's stain, Join our loud anthem, PRAISE TO THEE! CVI. THE WILL OF ISABELLA THE CATHOLIC. WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT. 1. On the 12th of October, 1504, Queen Isabella executed that celebrated testament which reflects so clearly the peculiar qualities of her mind and character. She begins with prescribing the arrangements for her burial. She orders her remains to be transported to Granada, to the Franciscan monastery of Santa Isabella in the Alhambra, and there deposited in a low and humble sepulcher, without other memorial than a plain inscription on it. 2. "But," she continues, "should the king, my lord, prefer a sepulcher in some other place, then my will is that my body be there transported, and laid by his side; that the union we have enjoyed in this world, and, through the mercy of God, may hope again for our souls in heaven, may be represented by our bodies in the earth." Then, desirous of correcting by her example, in this last act of her life, the wasteful pomp of funeral obsequies to which the Castilians were addicted, she commands that her own should be performed in the plainest and most unostentatious manner, and that the sum saved by this economy should be distributed in alms among the poor. 3. She next provides for several charities, assigning, among others, marriage portions for poor maidens, and a considerable sum for the redemption of Christian captives in Barbary. She enjoins the punctual discharge of all her personal debts within a year; she retrenches superfluous offices in the royal household, and revokes all such grants, whether in the forms of lands or annuities, as she conceives to have been made without sufficient warrant. She inculcates on her successors the importance of maintaining the integrity of the royal domains, and, above all, of never divesting themselves of their title to the important fortress of Gibraltar. 4. After this, she comes to the succession of the crown, which she settles on the infanta Joanna as "queen proprietor," and the archduke Philip as her husband. She gives them much good counsel respecting their future administration ; enjoining them, as they would secure the love and obedience of their subjects, to conform in all respects to the laws and usages of the realm, to appoint no foreigner to office,—an error into which Philip's connections, she saw, would be very likely to betray them,-and to make no laws or ordinances, "which necessarily require the consent of cortes," during their absence from the kingdom. 5. She recommends to them the same conjugal harmony which had ever subsisted between her and her husband; she beseeches them to show the latter all the deference and filial affection "due to him, beyond every other parent, for his |