le--almost without any teaching--they knew not how--just by looking
gladly on the words, even as she looked on the pretty daisies on the
green--till their meanings stole insensibly into her soul, and the sweet
syllables, succeeding each other on the blessed page, were all united by
the memories her heart had been treasuring every hour that her father or
her mother had read aloud in her hearing from the Book of Life. "Suffer
little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the
kingdom of Heaven"--how wept her parents, as these the most affecting of
our Saviour's words dropt silver-sweet from her lips, and continued in
her upward eyes among the swimming tears!

Be not incredulous of this dawn of reason, wonderful as it may seem to
you, so soon becoming morn--almost perfect daylight--with the "Holy
Child."--Many such miracles are set before us; but we recognise them
not, or pass them by, with a word or a smile of short surprise. How
leaps the baby in its mother's arms, when the mysterious charm of music
thrills through its little brain! And how learns it to modulate its
feeble voice, unable yet to articulate, to the melodies that bring forth
all round its eyes a delighted smile! Who knows what then may be the
thoughts and feelings of the infant awakened to the sense of a new
world, alive through all its being to sounds that haply glide past our
ears, unmeaning as the breath of the common air! Thus have mere infants
sometimes been seen inspired by music, till like small genii they
warbled spell-strains of their own, powerful to sadden and subdue
our hearts. So, too, have infant eyes been so charmed by the rainbow
irradiating the earth, that almost infant hands have been taught, as if
by inspiration, the power to paint in finest colours, and to imitate
with a wondrous art, the skies so beautiful to the quick-awakened spirit
of delight. What knowledge have not some children acquired, and gone
down scholars to their small untimely graves! Knowing that such things
have been--are--and will be--why art thou incredulous of the divine
expansion of soul--so soon understanding the things that are divine--in
the "Holy Child?"

Thus grew she in the eye of God, day by day waxing wiser and wiser
in the knowledge that tends towards the skies, and as if some angel
visitant were nightly with her in her dreams, awakening every morn with
a new dream of thought that brought with it a gilt of more comprehensive
speech. Yet