ntly elected, and, though "no speech-maker," was an excellent
member for several years.

The saddest, yet cheerfullest--the quaintest, yet most unaffected of
moralists, has written "A Complaint upon the Decay of Beggars," which
will not cease to be read, so long as pure English and pure feeling are
understood and appreciated. They were a part of the recollections of his
childhood--images painted upon his heart, impressions made in his soft
and pitying nature; and the "besom of societarian reformation,"
legislating busybodies, and tinkers of the general welfare, were
sweeping them away, with all their humanizing influences, their deep
lessons of dire adversity and gentle charity.

There are some memories of the childhood of western men--unlike, and yet
similar in their generous persuasions on all pure young hearts--upon
whose "Decay" might, also, be written a "Complaint," which should come
as truly, and yet as sadly, from the heart of him, who remembers his
boyhood, as did that from the heart of Elia. Gatherings of the militia,
burgou-hunts, barbecues, and anniversaries--phases of a primitive, yet
true and hearty time!--are fast giving way, before the march of a
barbarous "progress" (erroneously christened) "of intelligence." The
hard spirit of money-getting, the harder spirit of education-getting,
and the hardest of _all_ spirits, that of pharisaical morality, have
divorced our youth, _a vinculo_, from every species of amusement; and
life has come to be a probationary struggle, too fierce to allow a
moment's relaxation. The bodies of children are drugged and worried into
health, their intellects are stuffed and forced into premature
development, or early decay--but their _hearts_ are utterly forgotten!
Enjoyment is a forbidden thing, and only the miserable cant of
"intellectual pleasure" is allowed. _Ideas_--of philosophy, religious
observance, and mathematics--are supplied _ad nauseam_; but the
encouragement of a generous _impulse_, or a magnanimous _feeling_, is
too frivolous a thing to have a place in our vile system. Children are
"brought up," and "brought out," as if they were composed exclusively of
intellect and body: And, since the manifestations of any other element
are pronounced pernicious--even if the existence of the element itself
be recognised--the means of fostering it, innocent amusements, which
make the sunshine brighter, the spirits more cheerful, and the heart
purer and lighter, are sternly prohib