ascribed to the common people in his time, and which seemed to him of such importance that he would, as he says, have law on its side. "Did law," he says, 66 conspire with their enthusiasm, we should not only be the happiest nation upon earth, but the wisest also." He proceeds to argue virtually, that to preserve the piety of the young should be the chief object of politics; that a society influenced by it, and governed by reason among the great, would be the most indissoluble, virtuous, and efficient that can be imagined; and that we should encourage such piety, by which alone political society can subsist. But in the Children's Bower it is not alone the importance and outward form of piety that we learn; there is another tiny lesson to be obtained there, which teaches the difference between the spirit of false and true piety; for, be it whispered only, since the fact should grieve most the frivolous, and it is tiresome to have the faults of what is excellent pointed out, as they are always sure to be, over and over again; many of these grown-up and mature people, if they do not ignore and despise it, exercise a disposition under the same name which yields very different results from what true piety produces, both as respects themselves and others who stand in relation to them, who would not know the things that pertain to such a state of mind, and yet who must perforce be their acquaintance. "In the middle ages," says a great author, "hardly any thing but vice could be caricatured, because virtue was always visibly and personally noble. Human beauty was not then disdained; now, virtue itself is apt to inhabit such poor human bodies, that no aspect of it is invulnerable to jest." How many are there whose warped looks proclaim what store their heart is made of! Would you much like to march through Coventry with them? Let us see how far this modern piety, as manifested in some adults, can account for this phenomenon, not, of course, speaking from my own judgment on a subject so far from me, but referring to what every one says, exclaiming with poor Ninon on one occasion,— "Seigneur, que de vertus vous me faites haïr!" "The best of God's friends," observes a quaint English author, "have a smack of hypocrisy. It is the lot of few, if of any, to be free from every stain of it." If this be true, how glorious is the exemption of children and youths! each of whom must walk like one of the lions, instead of putting on a serious face, and carrying his head as if he looked for pins in the street. Young people, at least, are free from all taint of this kind; and the beauty of their character, in consequence, when only seen, constitutes of itself a source of most important instruction. Youth has an invincible dislike and opposition in its nature to gravity; not, as a great author well distinguishes, to gravity as such;-for, where gravity is wanted, it can be grave and serious enough, as the example of our Tom can prove, whose look and demeanour, the natural expression of what he felt, when occasions required it, might have awed any one to solemnity of heart;—but it is an enemy to the affectation of it, when it appears only a cloak for ignorance or for folly. It does not like to see people muffled up in a quantity of that dark drab of mental manufacture which will serve them to such little purpose when one day they are undressed. The young, moreover, have other exemptions as well. In life, as in a book, there may be, as a great author says, "too much, not religion, but too many good words, till it becomes a rhapsody of words." The young have no taste for this manna; but they are not the worse for wanting it. When the Church represents us as "divina institutione formati," she supposes us to be repeating after her the Paternoster,-audibly, nothing more. There is, again, a counterfeit form which the mature of age will often present for piety. It is that spirit of rigour which makes the mind suffer, "leaving free things and happy shows behind,"-which grows indignant that there should be such a thing as youth and beauty,-which turns kindness into aversion, "And with grim logic proves beyond debate And all things that are in it, that we fear We shall fall like a tree, and find our grave, There is even a false piety that not only isolates men from each other, but prompts them to open cruelty. "People used to say," says Brantome, "that one should beware of the Patenostres of Monsieur the Constable; for, while jabbering his prayers, he used to say, 'Go and hang me such a one, run me pikes through this other, cut me in pieces all these scoundrels.' This piety of Anne de Montmorency, in the reign of Henry II., it is needless to show, was never learned in the Children's Bower. In thus running over signs of the false piety, perhaps you think I go too fast; but I'm not come to my pace yet. There is another sort of piety, which children and youth, ever penetrating and quick to distinguish things, would teach us to avoid, therein agreeing even with the world itself, that no less detects and condemns it. "For," as the Père de Neuville says, "that humility so haughty, so fruitful in jealousies, in delicacy, in sensibilities, and less earnest in avoiding praise than in flying from humiliations; that charity into which glides so many aversions, antipathies, railleries, criticisms, and defamations,charity so prompt to be irritated at a slight insult, and so slow to kindle at the misery of the poor,-so prodigal in vain compassion, and so sterile in benefits; that zeal made up of pride, hardness, bitterness, satire, -that zeal which shows itself in turning a secret sin into a public scandal; that love of God, so ingeniously assorted and reconciled with the love of self, always at peace with the love of self; that piety so scrupulous, so fearful, with which, however, one has found the secret of reconciling projects of elevation and ambition, the taste for intrigue, the art of governing by flattery, of using devotion for reputation, and of leaving aside all that could injure one's fortune"-all this the very world itself hates and despises. There is no other humility respected by children and the world, but that which is sincere and frank, which aspires to nothing and is puffed up with nothing, which enjoys honours without pride and loses them without murmurs, which feels its defects and ignores its virtues, as far from esteeming self as from despising others. In the judgment of the young and of the world, too, there is no other charity but that of the saints, which is circumspect and reserved in its judgments, gentle in its words, amiable in its manners, tender in its sentiments, generous in its benefits, indulgent and prompt to pardon. In their judgment there is no other zeal to form saints but a zeal of peace and sweetness, able to correct without scandalizing, to reprove without exasperating, to gain the sinner and destroy the sin,— zeal attentive to save the sinner before God without losing him before men, and to take from him his vices while caring for his reputation. Such are the virtues that children and youth, and the world itself, expect from the saints; and if you were to suppose other and wider ways, the children and the world would take the part of the Gospel against you. You see, then, what important lessons in this respect the bower, as well as the world, can yield you. Children know of no other saints but such as have that judicious and reasonable sanctity which neither exaggerates nor weakens any thing, which neither scandalizes the world by its indulgence, nor shocks it by a proud and morose austerity,—which is gentle and complaisant, giving to God all that He demands, and refusing nothing to the world that God permits to be granted to it. Upon the whole, the piety which is recognized as genuine in the bower is that kind of disposition which the world itself cannot behold without admiring; "for," as the Père Boutauld says, "not one fine quality belonging to the human character should fail to be found in you with grace. It is," he adds, one of the saddest things, and the most worthy of lamentation, to see sinners who appear in the eyes of the world with much honour and much heart, and to see devout people who have neither, and who seem persuaded that the correction of their natural and insupportable defects ought not to be placed among the duties of devotion and grace *." We have, then, only to observe closely the piety of the children to learn from it how to distinguish the true from the false devotion. For children have not what the Père de Neuville calls piety of humour, when one inclination reigns over other inclinations, one disposition over another, pride over pleasure, * Les Conseilles de la Sagesse. chagrin over gaiety, malignity over impressionableness,-when we obey only ourselves, are directed and restrained only by ourselves, and when we have, in short, no one Christian virtue, not being just with the justice of Christ. "Grown-up people are often pious merely according to their humours. The haughty and proud woman makes piety consist in avoiding what would lessen her reputation and in appearing strictly virtuous, in giving to pride the heart to which she denies pleasure. The gay and dissipated one makes piety consist in her sweetness and moderation. The ambitious man makes it consist in the contempt of riches, pleasures, and in the love of labour; the avaricious and self-interested man in avoiding intemperance and prodigality. The vindictive, haughty soul makes it consist in scorning what is base, and blushing at an affront. The slave of human respect makes it consist in secret virtue hidden from the world. The intelligence that is curious and greedy of knowledge makes it consist in avoiding the sins of the heart; the careless and dissipated in so avoiding those of the mind *.” Children and young people seem to have the secret of piety by instinct. They know that it consists in renouncing their vicious inclinations and obeying God, not in following those inclinations under a mask, and submitting only to themselves. But it is not alone in a negative way that we can learn in the Children's Bower to distinguish the true from the false piety. We are presented in it, by means of examples, with the most direct and formal directions to recognize the latter. Men can often be forced through reasoning to confess that they have not spoken correctly. But after all, much may not have been gained. They may seem, as Plato says, "to be still in want of enchantments by certain words t." If this be the case now, I would say, let them apply to the Children's Bower; for the mere sight of what exists there will often be more conducive than any logic to soften, as if by enchantment, the most obdurate, and win over to what they have abandoned, or to what they have not before admired, the long unwilling. In the first place we can observe from what passes here, that piety is a genuine quality, harmonious with nature and with the *Sur la Nécessité de réprimer son Humeur. + Leges x. |