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Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain,

To welcome him to his new abode,

Now while the Heaven, by the Sun's team untrod

Hath took no print of the approaching light,

And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright.

See how from far, upon the eastern road,

The star-led wisards haste with odours sweet :

O run, prevent them with thy humble ode,

And lay it lowly at his blessed feet,

Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,

And join thy voice unto the angel quire,

From out his secret altar touch'd with hallowed fire.

The Pastorale of Corelli, called the Nativity, is intended for an imitation, in music, of the song of Angels hovering over the fields of Bethlehem, and gradually soaring to Heaven.

SECTION II.

On Childhood.

We cannot begin our consideration of the subject of childhood in a better manner than by perusing the instructions which the Reverend Dean of St. Patricks has so kindly drawn up, in order to be put into the hands of all those servants in families who have usually the responsible charge of children.

TO THE CHILDREN'S MAID.

If a child be sick, give it whatever it wants to eat or drink, although particularly forbid by the doctor. For what we long for in sickness will do us good. And throw the physic out of the window. The child will love you the better; but bid it not tell. Do the same for your lady, when she longs for any thing in sickness, and engage it will do her good.

If your mistress comes to the Nursery, and offers to whip a child, snatch it out of her hands in a rage, and tell her she is the cruellest mother you ever saw. She will chide, but love you the better. Tell the children stories of spirits when they offer to cry.

TO THE GOVERNESS.

Say the children have sore eyes; Miss Betty won't take to her book, &c. Make the misses read French and English novels, and French romances, and all the comedies writ in

King Charles II and King William's reigns, to soften their nature, and make them tender-hearted.

RULES THAT CONCERN ALL SERVANTS IN GENERAL.

"Where there are little masters and misses in a house, they are usually great impediments to the diversions of the servants; the only remedy is to bribe them with goody goodies that they may not tell tales to papa or mamma.

Lay all faults on a lap-dog, a favorite cat, a monkey, a parrot, a magpie, a child, or on the servant who was last turned off. By this rule you will excuse yourself, do no hurt to any body else, and save your master or lady from the trouble or vexation of chiding.

When your master and lady go abroad together, to dinner, or on a visit for the evening, you need leave only one servant in the house. You must leave one, unless you have a blackguard boy to answer at the door, and attend the children, if

there be any. Who is to stay at home is to be determined by short and long cuts, and the stayer at home may be comforted by a visit from a sweetheart, without danger of being caught together. When your master or lady cometh home, and wanteth a servant who happeneth to be abroad; your answer must be, that he or she hath just that minute stept out, being sent for by a cousin who was dying. When any servant returneth home drunk, you must all join in telling your master that he or she has gone to bed very sick; upon which your lady will be so good-natured as to order some comfortable thing for the poor man or maid.”

On the Stories of Spirits to which Swift alludes in his “Directions to Servants" he tells us, in another work, that at Liliput "if nurses ever presume to entertain the girls with

frightful or foolish stories or the common follies practised by chambermaids among us, they are publicly whipped thrice about the city, imprisoned for a year, and banished for life to the most desolate part of the island." Swift gives the moral of this fictitious story. "Thus the young ladies there are as much ashamed of being cowards and fools as the men." Southey relates one of those horrible nursery tales in his "Grandmother's Story," but their general character and their effect upon the infant imagination is best described in the following passage from Akenside :—

The village matron round the blazing hearth,
Suspends the infant audience with her tales
Breathing astonishment! of witching rhymes
And evil spirits; of the death-bed call
Of him who robbed the widow, and devoured
The orphan's portion; of unquiet souls
Risen from the grave to ease the heavy guilt
Of deeds in life concealed; of shapes that walk
At dead of night, and clank their chains, and wave
The torch of Hell around the murderer's bed.
At every solemn pause the crowd recoil,
Gazing each other speechless, and congealed
With shivering sighs, till eager for th' event,
Around the Beldame all erect they hang

Each trembling heart with grateful terror quelled.

It may be thought curious to relate a little story here from Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," the only book Dr. Johnson says, that ever took him out of bed earlier than his usual time. It is a farrago of stories and opinions from all manner of books, strung together with little regard to arrangement, or their probability or importance.

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At Basil, many little children, in the spring time, went to gather flowers in a meadow at the town's end, where a

malefactor hung in gibbets; at gazing at it, one by chance flung a stone, and made it stir: by which accident the children affrighted ran away. One, slower than the rest, looking back, and seeing the stirred carcass wagging towards her, cried out, "it comes after," and was so terribly affrighted, that for many days she could not rest, eat, or sleep; she could not be pacified, but died of melancholy." Burton has a series of chapters on the "causes of melancholy." One is on "melancholy caused by wet-nurses." He combats the opinions of those who say that children imbibe bad dispositions with their milk from wet-nurses. He asks, why may not the mother herself be a peevish wanton flirt, a waspish choleric slut, a crazed piece of goods?"

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In Locke's Essay we read-"Those who have children, should think it worth their while diligently to watch, and carefully to prevent the undue connection of ideas in their minds. This is the time most susceptible of lasting impressions and though those relating to the health of the body are, by discreet people, minded and fenced against, yet I am apt to doubt, that those which relate more particularly to the mind, and terminate in the understanding or passions, have been much less heeded than the thing deserves: nay, those relating purely to the understanding have, as I suspect, been by the most men wholly overlooked. The ideas of goblins and sprights have really no more to do with darkness than light; yet let but a foolish maid inculcate these often on the mind of a child, and raise them there together, possibly he shall never be able to separate them again so long as he lives: but darkness shall ever afterwards bring with it those frightful ideas, and they shall be so joined that he can no more bear the one than the other." Locke might have mentioned what

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