a bit of it. No writer has. What he is going to say he knows in a general sort of way; but as to how he is going to say it, he himself must wait and see. It would seem as if some power, quite independent of ourselves, were interfering in the matter. And, indeed, in our own individual cases, we, writers, are not slow to admit such an interfering power. We call it "inspiration" and "genius" and other fine names.

The old difficulty about walking was solved, ambulando. The difficulty of beginning has been overcome by having begun. I have made myself somewhat more easy in my chair, can look around me less nervously, fortified by the consciousness that at any rate I have said something. But I had certain notions to propound, and I have not lost sight of them, and you will allow me to shape them into words after my own erratic fashion. Professor though I assume to be-probably spectacled-imagining myself now and then to be old; not, I would have you to know, by reason of any large lapse of years, but rather because I flatter myself that I have stored up the produce of several vintages of experience, of rare and precious brand. For, you see, there were comet years in my life since I began to live. Well, however all that may be, I use my eyes, and I see a great deal of what is going on around me; and I believe that to be a much rarer gift than perhaps you imagine. It so happens, and I thank my stars for it, that I am placed rather on the outskirts of the fight than in the press of battle. Consequently I see more of the battle of life than some of the active combatants. And occasionally, too, thank God, it is the fortune of my position, that I can draw some sorely maimed sufferer out of the throng, and bind up his crushed limbs, and pour oil into his gaping wounds.

Well, amongst the people who attract a share of my attention are certain new beginners whom I will present to you, and in whom, if you only observe their manners and customs, you will doubtless take an intelligent interest.

It happens it happens constantly-it is always happening more or less. You must surely have observed it. They marry, this little more than boy, and this little more than girl, and they begin their housekeeping on the slenderest possible stock of experience. They begin it in not a little of the spirit with which, not so long ago, they used to conduct those childish pastimes that often give to people with a touch of humour in them such a comic commentary on the future grave pursuits which they foreshadow. I can well imagine the young husband and the young wife shyly making each other's acquaintance, and admitting each other into those barred and locked chambers of character that are rarely or never opened before marriage. They learn by degrees little things about each other, which, little though they be, are to them of unspeakable importance. Above all they learn, and it is well if they learn wisely-though the knowledge has a smack of the bitter in it

the inevitable abatement they must make in their before-marriage ideals of each other. It has, I repeat, its touch of sadness, this knowledge; but it has to be acquired. Then they get what I may call the "lie" of each other's mind, and may congratulate themselves if they have common thoughts on great subjects; but may, perhaps, much more congratulate themselves if they have many common tastes and common feelings about things which fools, and only fools (but fools are numerous), call little. It is a comment I have made on life in general, that people differ with more bitterness about matters of feeling and of taste, than about matters of pure thought. And then I laugh quietly to myself when I picture the effort he makes to sustain the character of a man, which, in virtue of his marriage (and he feels only too keenly in virtue of little else), all his acquaintance thrust upon him. And again the effort, many times to be renewed, that she makes to remember that she is no longer a mere girl; and my quiet laugh is only deepened, when, as sometimes happens, the thing is overdone, and the young wife assumes a matronhood that would be the natural growth only of long, long years. How full of tender humour, of deep pathos, of laughter, and of some not very bitter tears, it all is, if one could only see it, as a sympathetic angel might be supposed to see it.

Then comes, in God's good time, to the young couple, a tiny form-the embodiment as it were of their affection-a tiny voice that breaks the silence of their love, and yet, more eloquently even than that silence, expresses it. You can see a new dignity seated on the young husband's brow, and a deeper tenderness gleaming in the eyes of the young wife. For evermore the tone of the house has changed-for all the music of the house has set itself to the shrill treble of "baby's" cry. God has given to this man and this woman one of the noblest possible tasks. He has created for them a new being, rich with all the yet unexhausted possibilities of human nature. What a trust it is !—not alone a new body to be fed and nurtured, but a new soul that is no sooner born than it, too, is hungering for its proper food. It will starve and dwindle if it be not fed, and even when it is fed it will take shape and grow in a way that very much depends on the sort of food it gets. It, too, must have its light, and air, and sunshine. Very fair, no doubt, were the flowers of Paradise given into the keeping of the first human pair, but how, in fairness or in beauty, could they compare to this tiny baby flower!-the latest planted in God's garden of the world, and given to be nurtured to perfection by a father and mother. Verily, in this garden God's angels shall walk betimes, and God Himself come often to see how His gardeners are doing their work. Here is another new

beginner, in whom almost every one that sees him feels compelled to take an interest. And this beginner begins as if he had a right to begin, and knew it. He has no sort of hesitation in expressing his feelings, no reticence whatever about his wants. By-and-bye

he waxes strong and large, and crows and splutters, and kicks lustily, and stretches out his bits of hands as if they were meant to grasp the universe. The little eyes dilate with wonder at every new sight, and every sight is new. But if everything he sees is new to him, everything he does is new to his young mother. He smiles, and his smile is a revelation-for never surely baby smiled with so sweet a smile, since little Abel (ah! not Cain, though he was eldest born, and, doubtless, smiled as babies have been smiling ever since) smiled up into the face of Mother Eve. His laugh has music in it such as his mother, at any rate, never heard before. His very wrath is sublime. As a poet might gaze on a storm-tossed sea, so a mother beholds her child's momentary fit of passion-as yet he is no more responsible than the sea itself. He cries for the moon in heaven, and it scarcely seems absurd, for he seems, in virtue of his very babyhood, to have a sort of right to it and to everything.

What an event is the first tooth, appearing after painful days and sleepless nights, and infinite pity from every one about. Quite an event—an event only to be equalled, and equalled and surpassed, by his first articulate word. What word it is, is known only to the mother. She hears it distinctly, days, if not weeks, before any one else can recognise anything better than well-defined babble; if unmistakable, certainly as yet inarticulate. Be it what it may, it has uttered itself first in the mother's heart before it lives on baby's lips. Bethink thee, how the angels crowd around to listen to baby's first word-first link, as they hope, in a golden chain that will one day bind together earth and Heaven. Ah! baby, many a wise, eloquent word, it may be, those lips of thine shall speak in the aftertime, but never word so profoundly interesting to any human being as was that first broken word to thy mother! Soon, animal instinct begins to be tempered by some manifestations of a rational nature. Baby learns rapidly more things, and more rapidly than he shall ever learn even when the sun of intellect shall have reached its meridian. Just think of all a baby has to learn, and in so short a time—the uses of his limbs, involving, as he may see for himself if ever he comes to be an anatomist, a vast and complicated series of mechanical problems. He has to become acquainted with dangers, and how to avoid them—with difficulties, and how to overcome them. He has to read faces long before he can dream of reading books; and it is wonderful what skill baby acquires in this art, but it is an acquirement that he will lose in great measure as he grows up. Then he is rapidly acquiring a new language, and acquiring it with such subtle touches of idiom, that never in after-life need he hope to learn another language quite as thoroughly. Then, he has to make acquaintance with a world as new to him as the world once was new to Adam. As before that great first father, so before baby, must pass the animals, each to be ticketed with its name; then the inanimate objects-the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the green old hills, and the streets of the old town, and the houses-each,

believe you, with its different face, different with subtle touches of difference and the trees, and flowers, and lanes of the country places and all these are photographed so accurately, and with such keen acids written into the fresh surface of the soul, that it is found, in most cases, that, when other later pictures have faded and perished, these first ones come to the surface, with all their early freshness still undimmed. Even poor old Falstaff-however his soul have been overlaid with evil experience-in the last days of his unquiet life, will babble of the green fields where his happier childhood played.

The

And in all this varied learning the mother is head teacher. father's part will come in due time, later on; but, thank God! our mothers have the first of us. Have you ever watched a mother in her home school? Well, she is clever as she never was clever before-wiser than ever she has been or could be for her sole self; far-seeing, conjecturing the future so well, that conjecture, sometimes, as by some divine right of motherhood, seems to be elevated to the domain of prophecy.

And then baby-scarcely "baby" any more, begins to be-a poet. Yes, a poet. At one time every one is, for a time, a poet when he is a child. For, lo! the world is full of beauty—and no long use has yet dimmed the keen eye of the young soul. And he is open to the influence of wonder-and he is full of awe-and “the light that never was on sea or shore" is for a time, glorifying even objects which he will afterwards learn to call common, and to think commonplace. And sometimes his young soul is lifted up on some tidal wave of passionate terror, and all these things make the world very wonderful, and make this new beginner a poet.

I, the present lecturer, remember with a vividness, which I would utterly fail if I sought to express in words, the day and the hour when I first saw the sea. I sat upon the beach, literally spellbound-overcome by an awful fear, and yet even more fascinated by some strange charm. I wished to be away, and yet could not tear myself from the sight. Now, I am sure, I was something of a poet in that hour.

When I was more or less a beginner in this weary world-about the time I first began to know that there was an extensive world beyond the town in which I was born-that great world was in a state of unusual commotion. It was the year 1848-and rumours used to come of probable and likely wars. Now no one of those who spoke freely of those things before me, not heeding the presence of a child, could ever have dreamed of the storm of terror these rumours raised in my soul. Then came an element of the preternatural to make the terror greater still. For, I was told, and with the utter faith of childhood believed it to the letter-that a mysterious horseman in a soldier's cloak, spurs on heel, and sabre jingling at his side, had come riding a travel-worn steed in the gloom of

the night, and had repaid the assistance of a friendly smith by a warning to be prepared for some awful doom that was to fall upon the land. I am sure that no actual doom could possibly awaken in me now anything like the emotion of terror-remember, not counterpoised as terror would be now by any large exercise of the reflective faculties-which I felt habitually in the days I speak of.

But there are other memories of that beginning time, not quite so dreadful, but still full of awe and wonder. There was near our house an old church tower-a ruin with open windows, and I found myself, some way or other, in possession of the fearful knowledge that this tower was the private residence of a giant. I used to watch that tower from the window of my room, for hours together, and ponder, with all the might of my young mind, over his mysterious occupations; and I am sure, where the shadows of the crows were brisk, I often saw him moving within. I was not afraid. I felt myself too far out of his reach for that; but I felt the keenest interest in that giant, with just a dash of awe; and, oh! I wish I could feel just that way for an hour, about anything now.

There are other childish memories of which I do not care to speak; but merely to say this about them, that if anybody knew the vast possibilities of terror in a child, a terror that will fasten its teeth into the little life, and of which the child would die rather than speak-I think if people knew this, they would, unless they were brutes, try to guard a child from such emotions. I do not suppose all children experience these as I did; but these things, felt keenly and remembered well, have had their part in making me what I am. And what is that? the reader may ask; of course I answer, "I do not know ;" and equally of course, perhaps, I think to myself that I do know tolerably well. But this I do know, that whatever I am- -I am not finished yet-nor shall be till they pull the face-cloth over my face, and fold the still hands across my breast.

NEW BOOKS.

I. Nazareth. By MRS. CASHEL HOEY, (London: Burns and Oates, 17, Portman-street.)—This little book contains an interesting account of the labours undertaken by the nuns of Nazareth in the Holy Land. By a singular train of circumstances the religious who began their work in France, and chose the name of "Nazareth" as their religious title, were called on, some thirty years later, to make a foundation in the veritable "Nazareth of Galilee," so dear to every Catholic heart. It was time, indeed, that Catholic women should come to the rescue. Heresy had been beforehand; and in the very spot where the Archangel had first hailed Our Lady as "full of grace," her sweet name was denounced, devotion to her called a sin. So the brave nuns came to fight her battles; and the letters which one of them wrote home to France are now given to the world. "Come a little way with me," she says, "to the Virgin's Fountain. Nineteen centuries ago, as it is this day, this was the only spring at which the women might draw water; and we see them coming and going along the pathway