The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-04-23 00:00:00

The child is fathet of the man ;

because age lives again its joyous hours of innocence,
when the sunny face of childhood irradiates its fading
paths; and because the tears of childhood's grief bid
again the old man's tears of childhood Sow, at the me-
mory of bygone troubles, proportionate in their magni-
tude to melt the tender passions of the infant breast, and
whose very contrast with the after stern realities of life
is sacredly written down in characters of hallowed joy;
for the whole drama of childhood's chequered hours is to
the fostering memory of age but one many-coloured joy,

associated there with the tender reminiscences of the en-
deared past, when the path of life had more flowers than
thorns to every one of human race. We think the joys
and griefs of the child we look upon are but so many
mirrors of our own witching past—gone, gone—never to
return ! This is the real secret of that close sympathy
between the extremes of lite, when reciprocated by age
towards childhood, in commemoration of our once many-
coloured joy—our fresh and budding springtime. Thus
again we could

" talk of sunshine and of song;
And summer day, when we were young;
Sweet childish days that were as long
As twenty days are now."

Such reflections, as they stole upon our mind, almost
amounted to pleasing sadness, and we treasured up what
appeared to us the philosophy of the subject before us—
viz., the moving sympathy of the old iron-faced guard
towards the child before him, expressed in the language
of truest significance—by the suffusion of each eyelid
will a tear. 'rue picture drawn thus to our corporeal and
menial vision seemed a cabinet gem, and we accordingly
framed and hung it up in the treasury of our recollec-
tions!

In the course of a short mile or two another element
in the field of our curiosity presented itself. The train
stopped—hardly so the girlish tears. A little boy, redo-
lent with 'lean, buoyant with animal spirits to bursting
—he was a boy i full of boyishness in every sense of the
word—awaitedourstopping,whilstsome parting trick of fun
must be let off against the party who handed him into the
carriage, and placed him opposite the tearful one. She
was expecting him to join her : the meeting was one of
mutual affection : he might be two years older than her-
self, perhaps eight years old : smiles were interchanged,
and a hasty kiss as well, by these little lovers, somewhat
abashed at the presence of strangers; whilst the train
again gradually broke into its accelerated speed. The
thing was natural: smiles and tears, and tears and smiles,
chequer the countenance of youth, like April showers and
sunshine ; and everybody knows this—and everybody
knows, too. that children's sympathies are keen and
quickly excited. It was quite proper that smiles should
be exchanged for tears when a little sister greets a little
brothel from whom she may have been separated for
months, and so too with children of a larger growth
under similar circumstances ; and it was quite natural,
too. that the brother's ever-smiling countenance should
kindle with brighter glaw on: regaining his long-lost sister,
and that a touch of tenderness should gravitate from his
beaming eye down through laughing features : all this was
as it ought to be. Perhaps they were both returning from
school, whither they had been sent, for the time, to be
estrangedfrom theendearments of home. Soft was in reality
a fact, which our benevt I -or curiosity learned and gathered
as its reward. But 4 • t',e little episode of greeting
joy being passed—a tr,o. unbeam through a watery
sky—again the (ears cOne a afresh to pour down the
unfurrowed cheeks of t t .ttle sister, and this though
she was returning back to her hotne ! We cannot acCount
for it, neither could she; therefore the old guard and
ourself were reduced to the necessity of " booking" them
as tears of joy ! Highly wrought indeed must be the tone
of that infant mind which has no other mode of expressing
the thrilling and rapturous, notes of joy but in the secret
and unaccounted-for—yea, mysteriously-wrought—ca-
dences of sorrow ! Though this occur in numberless
instances every day, yet no less striking because common
is this passage in human sensibility ; nor less exquisitely
balanced and faithfully true must be those tones of sym-
pathy from the heart of affection, because it has been and
ever presents itself a matter of common-place occurrence,
in which note answers for note in harmony and full ac-
cord, whether the keys of joy or sorrow are struck, or
struck alternately. The harmony of love must respond :
one chord must answer to its fellow and none other, be
that sounded high or low, or .both successively. We
have all beard that if two stringed instruments, placed
together, and if a chord in one instrument, be struck, the
corresponding chord will vibrate its responsive echo of
unison, provided they were both of perfect tune. Thus,
though we were at first a little surprised, yet the reflec-
tion of a moment or two struck out the analogy we have
alluded to, as a satisfactory explanation of the interesting
psychological problem that followed it; for as both these
little creatures bad smiled together in greeting joy, so the
joy of greeting, through the bond of sympathy, as was
actually the fact, must bid their tears together flow !
Were not their hearts in unison ? Did not the chords
respond ? There could be but one pulse, then, flowing
in but one stream from separate hearts. God grant it
may be ever so !

If but we had possessed an artist's pencil, we would
have sketched, as well as noted in a book, the embodi-
ment, the living portraiture of that sweetest of human
passions, that sensibility par excellence, whose natural
study was before us—ale crown-jewel of human dignity.
The majesty of human nature rose before us, to assert the
loftiest prerogwives of its crown. What a study ! How
did that picture travel on with us, rivetted on the field of
our organ of reflection ! When the little joy-twins
stopped, our musings went on ; till at last we pulled up
short at the end of our trip, the pretty little port of
Fleetwood,—and just on the eve of swallowing the body
and bones of a proposition conjured up by our imagina-
tion—almost an absurdity, perhaps quite so—viz., that
Joy and Sadness were born twins, severed by the vulgar
mind, but blended in the " ideal," so as to become—dare
we utter it ?—mutually convertible terms !