privately regaled at home, hold a symposium of topers in our streets, and the heart's desire among mothers seems now to be " May we never want a babe, or a bottle to give him." They are under the impression that they have greatly improved upon the time when Shakespeare's daughter inscribed on her mother's grave: “Ubera tu, mater, tu lac, vitamque dedisti."

It is not an edifying sight, and it is associated with a much more severe affliction. These babes are mounted infantry, or, rather, they are "carriage company," and Master Redhead's phaeton, and Miss. Merry's victoria, with a procession of diminutive vehicles of all denominations, stop the way "where men most do congregate."

For many years of my earlier existence we were mercifully spared this plague of perambulators, which now, in consequence of some national degradation, Little Englandism, barbed wire, pigeon-shooting, or croquet, has spread like locusts through the land.

I shall never forget the ordeal when, in attempting to avoid one of these machines, I lost my balance and stumbled on another, upsetting it, and ejecting the occupant. I fell clear of it; but the nurse, although the baby was screaming loudly, immediately announced, "He has killed the child!" and it was evidently the verdict of the spectators that I had out-Heroded Herod, and ought to die.

The nursemaid loves the perambulator. In the first place, we have long been convinced that it ill becomes us, as the most civilised nation on the face

of the earth, to carry anything, even for ourselves, much less to bear one another's burdens; that, being supreme on the face of the waters also, no Briton, male or female, shall ever be a slave; and that only as helps, colleagues, auxiliaries, employés, but never as servants, will we co-operate with our fellow-men; and this upon one immutable condition, that the maximum of wage shall accompany the minimum of work.

There are associations more tender and sweet. The perambulator may be taken far from the madding crowd to the quiet suburb and the peaceful park; and when it is located awhile in the scorching sunshine, the chilly shade, or in "all the airts the wind can blow," with the head of the inmate dangling over the side, pretty Jane can enjoy delightful converse with Mr. Atkins, of his Majesty's army, or Mr. Peeler, of his Majesty's police.

Should the babe be preserved from sunstroke, catarrh, and strangulation, a new peril awaits his early childhood from this same custodian and culprit so soon as he is able to understand it, and an arrow that flieth by night is far more hurtful than any pestilence which walketh by noonday. Miss Jenny has heard from her friend the policeman of deeds of violence, of burglars, murderers, and executions, and has read in her favourite publications of spectres, and of giants, dwarfs, and other deformities. With a cruel ignorance she repeats these records in the nursery, and the result in many cases inflicts so much suffering, such an agony of

privately regaled at home, hold a symposium of topers in our streets, and the heart's desire among mothers seems now to be "May we ne'er want a babe, or a bottle to give him." They are under the impression that they have greatly improved upon the time when Shakespeare's daughter inscribed on her mother's grave: "Ubera tu, mater, tu lac, vitamque dedisti."

It is not an edifying sight, and it is associated with a much more severe affliction. These babes are mounted infantry, or, rather, they are "carriage company," and Master Redhead's phaeton, and Miss. Merry's victoria, with a procession of diminutive vehicles of all denominations, stop the way "where men most do congregate."

For many years of my earlier existence we were mercifully spared this plague of perambulators, which now, in consequence of some national degradation, Little Englandism, barbed wire, pigeon-shooting, or croquet, has spread like locusts through the land.

I shall never forget the ordeal when, in attempting to avoid one of these machines, I lost my balance and stumbled on another, upsetting it, and ejecting the occupant. I fell clear of it; but the nurse, although the baby was screaming loudly, immediately announced, "He has killed the child!" and it was evidently the verdict of the spectators that I had out-Heroded Herod, and ought to die.

In the

The nursemaid loves the perambulator. first place, we have long been convinced that it ill becomes us, as the most civilised nation on the face

of the earth, to carry anything, even for ourselves, much less to bear one another's burdens; that, being supreme on the face of the waters also, no Briton, male or female, shall ever be a slave; and that only as helps, colleagues, auxiliaries, employés, but never as servants, will we co-operate with our fellow-men; and this upon one immutable condition, that the maximum of wage shall accompany the minimum of work.

There are associations more tender and sweet. The perambulator may be taken far from the madding crowd to the quiet suburb and the peaceful park; and when it is located awhile in the scorching sunshine, the chilly shade, or in "all the airts the wind can blow," with the head of the inmate dangling over the side, pretty Jane can enjoy delightful converse with Mr. Atkins, of his Majesty's army, or Mr. Peeler, of his Majesty's police.

Should the babe be preserved from sunstroke, catarrh, and strangulation, a new peril awaits his early childhood from this same custodian and culprit so soon as he is able to understand it, and an arrow that flieth by night is far more hurtful than any pestilence which walketh by noonday. Miss Jenny has heard from her friend the policeman of deeds of violence, of burglars, murderers, and executions, and has read in her favourite publications of spectres, and of giants, dwarfs, and other deformities. With a cruel ignorance she repeats these records in the nursery, and the result in many cases inflicts so much suffering, such an agony of

terror, that, in all seriousness, I would earnestly entreat those persons that are married, or intend to take that estate upon them, to remember and to avert this miserable distress, not only by a thoughtful caution as to the words which they speak in the hearing of their children, but by forbidding their servants to tell them these idle tales.

Keble has said that "the heart of childhood is all mirth," but this mirth may be overwhelmed by that horrible dread, by that awful, appalling consciousness of the presence of evil, and that terrible apprehension of its power, which convince us that there are angels of darkness as well as angels of light, and which can only be dispelled by the prayerful faith that greater are they which are with us than those that are against us. It is wicked to tell children of those things only which are vile and hateful, and not of those which are beautiful and true, and it is this omission which aggravates the terrors and sorrows of childhood, and causes the tender, sensitive spirit to feel them more acutely than at any other period of life. I write of my own experience. I have been in positions of great peril, nigh unto death, on the sea, on the precipice, on the rail, and on the hunting-field, but I have never realised so helplessly, so hopelessly, the torment of fear as when a little child alone in the night I have expected to feel the touch or to hear the voice of some monster described to me in the preceding day with threats of a visitation. I can distinctly remember visions which I had in my dreams more than