, who are brought up neither in a family nor in a
public home by paid guardians, but in a place of charity, rightly named,
where impartial, unalterable, and impersonal devotion has them in hand.
They endure an immeasurable loss, and are orphans, but they gain in
perpetual gaiety; they live in an unchanging temperature. The separate
nest is nature's, and the best; but it might be wished that the separate
nest were less subject to moods. The nurse has her private business, and
when it does not prosper, and when the remote affairs of the governess go
wrong, the child receives the ultimate vibration of the mishap.

The uniformity of infancy passes away long before the age when children
have this indefinite suffering inflicted upon them; and they have become
infinitely various, and feel the consequences of the cares of their
elders in unnumbered degrees. The most charming children feel them the
most sensibly, and not with resentment but with sympathy. It is
assuredly in the absence of resentment that consists the virtue of
childhood. What other thing are we to learn of them? Not simplicity,
for they are intricate enough. Not gratitude; for their usual sincere
thanklessness makes half the pleasure of doing them good. Not obedience;
for the child is born with the love of liberty. And as for humility, the
boast of a child is the frankest thing in the world. A child's natural
vanity is not merely the delight in his own possessions, but the triumph
over others less fortunate. If this emotion were not so young it would
be exceedingly unamiable. But the truth must be confessed that having
very quickly learnt the value of comparison and relation, a child
rejoices in the perception that what he has is better than what his
brother has; this comparison is a means of judging his fortune, after
all. It is true that if his brother showed distress, he might make haste
to offer an exchange. But the impulse of joy is candidly egotistic.

It is the sweet and entire forgiveness of children, who ask pity for
their sorrows from those who have caused them, who do not perceive that
they are wronged, who never dream that they are forgiving, and who make
no bargain for apologies--it is this that men and women are urged to
learn of a child. Graces more confessedly childlike they make shift to
teach themselves.

FAIR AND BROWN

George Eliot, in one of her novels, has a good-natured mother, who
confesses that when she administ