Expecting with clear hope to live anew,
Among the angels, fed with heavenly dew?
We have this sign of joy, that, many days,
While on this earth his struggling spirit stays,
The name of Jesus in his mouth contains
His only food, his sleep, his ease from pains.
O may that sound be rooted in my mind,
Of which in him such strong effect I find.
Dear Lord, receive my son, whose winning love
To me was like a friendship far above
The course of nature, or his tender age,
Whose looks could all my bitter griefs assuage.
Let his pure soul, ordain'd seven years to be
In that frail body, which was part of me,
Remain my pledge in heaven, as sent to show
How to this port at every step I go."

Ben Jonson celebrated two of his children's deaths in verse. The tiny elegy, "On my first daughter," is lit all through as with the reflection of her tender innocence who inspired it-baby Mary, of whom we know nothing but that

"At six months' end she parted hence,

With safety of her innocence."

The parallel poem, "On my first Son," whom with a touch of pathetic humour he styles “his best piece of poetry," is in marked contrast to Sir John Beaumont's on his little Gervase.

"Oh, could I lose all father now!"

sighs Jonson, pitying his own grief, while he envies the happy lot of his seven-year-old,

"To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age!"

Beaumont, on the contrary, clings to the tie which binds him to his lost child, and seems to look upon it as a sort of passport into heaven for himself.

Milton's fantastically beautiful poem, "On the death of a fair Infant," contains something of the same thought, of a child's innocence availing not only while it is here on earth, but also in heaven, as a safeguard for its parents in the Divine reckoning. Just as the sins of the fathers are visited on the children, the children's sinlessness may be supposed to serve in some sort as a shield for their fathers:

"But oh! why didst thou not stay here below, To bless us with thy heaven-loved innocence, To stand 'twixt us and our deservèd smart?

But thou canst best perform that office where thou art.”

The thought, fanciful as it may seem, belongs one might almost say to natural religion. It forms part of the Jewish faith that the merits of a son are counted to his father for righteousness in the world to come. So, too, in the Moslem faith it is held that when the little ones on the day of resurrection are bidden welcome into Paradise with the words, "There is no reckoning to be made with you," they will refuse with tears and sobs to enter through the gates without their fathers and their mothers. Till their cry coming before the Almighty He will bid them pass among the waiting multitudes and take the hands of their parents and introduce them into Paradise.2

The belief crops up in the literature of the most diverse races. In an ancient ballad, "The Bonnie Bairns," modernised by Allan Cuningham, two infants

'L. M. Brunton: Contemporary Review.
2 E. W. Lane: "Arabian Society."

sue for their mother at the seat of grace, very much as the Moslem infants are supposed to do:

'And O! and O!' said the youngest babe,

'My mother maun come in :'

'And O! and O!' said the eldest babe,
'Wash her twa hands frae sin.'

'And O! and O!' said the youngest babe,
'She nursed me on her knee:

'And O! and O!' said the eldest babe,
'She's a mither yet to me.'

'And O! and O!' said the babies baith,
'Take her where waters rin,

And white as the milk o' her white breast
Wash her twa hands frae sin.'"

I

Only the children had no fear, and reached the other side in safety," says the Red Indian story of "The Land of Souls," telling of the stormy lake which had to be crossed before the happy land was reached.

It was as he gazed on his little daughter, dead, that Luther mused aloud: "Dear little Madeleine, all is well with thee now. . .. Think where she is gone! She has certainly made a happy journey. With children everything is simple. They die without anguish, without disputes, without bodily grief, without the temptations of death, as if they were falling asleep."

I

"The Yellow Fairy Book :" Andrew Lang.

XII

WHOM THE GODS LOVE

"The pow'rs aboon are cautious as they're just,
An' dinna like to gie owre meikle trust

To this inconstant earth, wi' what's divine,
Lest in laigh damps they shou'd their lustre tyne.
Sae let's leave aff our murmuring an' tears,
An' never value life by length o' years;

But as we can in guidness it employ,

Syne wha dies first, first gains eternal joy.”

Allan Ramsay: "Keitha."

THERE seems to be a sort of natural philosophy in the human mind which inclines men, for all their occasional pessimism, to consider whatever happens as best. Thus, though old age is generally looked upon as a blessing, when one dies in youth so many consolatory reflections gather about the event that even the old heathens, the pleasure-loving Greeks, evolved for themselves the saying, "Whom the gods love die young."

"It is no new thing," wrote Massimo D'Azeglio, the Italian patriot, looking back in his later days on the going hence in her youth of his sister, Mathilde, "for poets and writers of elegies to say, 'He or she was too good, too heavenly; the world was not worthy of

such a being; God therefore recalled them to Himself.' And, in truth, experience often shows these poets to be right. There are some natures so perfect and angelic that they seem to have come into the world. by mistake, or as if they had lost their way. Soon they pass away from us; and though mourned by all, none seem to wonder at their so early death." I

There is in youth such a touching power, so heavenly a charm, it must be well that the images of some should be involved in it for ever. To Newman, in his grief for his youngest sister Mary's sudden death it brought comfort to reflect that her image would ever after be associated in the hearts of those who loved her

"With all pleasant thoughts and bright,
With youth and loveliness"-

that her "soft, soothing name" would always be to them a thing apart from sorrow.

"Beautiful," says Longfellow, "is that season of life when we can say, in the language of Scripture, ‘Thou hast the dew of thy youth." And he points the words to a particular case: "Death has taken thee too, and thou hast the dew of thy youth. He has placed thee upon his bosom, and his stern countenance wears a smile. . . . We learn to gaze and shudder not; for he carries in his arms the sweet blossoms of our earthly hopes. We shall see them all again blooming in a happier land."