t is no longer the uniform of a soldier that arrests our
attention; but perhaps the flowing carriage of a woman, or perhaps a
countenance that has been vividly stamped with passion and carries an
adventurous story written in its lines. The pleasure of surprise is
passed away; sugar loaves and water-carts seem mighty tame to encounter;
and we walk the streets to make romances and to sociologise. Nor must we
deny that a good many of us walk them solely for the purposes of transit
or in the interest of a livelier digestion. These, indeed, may look back
with mingled thoughts upon their childhood, but the rest are in a better
case; they know more than when they were children, they understand
better, their desires and sympathies answer more nimbly to the
provocation of the senses, and their minds are brimming with interest as
they go about the world.

According to my contention, this is a flight to which children cannot
rise. They are wheeled in perambulators or dragged about by nurses in a
pleasing stupor. A vague, faint, abiding wonderment possesses them. Here
and there some specially remarkable circumstance, such as a water-cart
or a guardsman, fairly penetrates into the seat of thought, and calls
them, for half a moment, out of themselves; and you may see them, still
towed forward sideways by the inexorable nurse as by a sort of destiny,
but still staring at the bright object in their wake. It may be some
minutes before another such moving spectacle reawakens them to the world
in which they dwell. For other children, they almost invariably show
some intelligent sympathy. "There is a fine fellow making mud pies,"
they seem to say; "that I can understand, there is some sense in mud
pies." But the doings of their elders, unless where they are speakingly
picturesque or recommend themselves by the quality of being easily
imitable, they let them go over their heads (as we say) without the
least regard. If it were not for this perpetual imitation, we should be
tempted to fancy they despised us outright, or only considered us in the
light of creatures brutally strong and brutally silly; among whom they
condescended to dwell in obedience like a philosopher at a barbarous
court. At times, indeed, they display an arrogance of disregard that is
truly staggering. Once, when I was groaning aloud with physical pain, a
young gentleman came into the room and nonchalantly inquired if I had
seen his bow and arrow. He made no account of my gr