New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1850-11-16

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| there were abysses of unspokeu tenderness ia
| ner; as wen az olear, sound. w0many sense and
! insight But she thought herself ms much bound
| to keep down all tenderness as if she had been
| some ascetIc OF the middle ages-so do extremes
meet !. was carnal, she cons dered She had
as yet no right to have any spiritual aT,ction",
. for US We were still children of wrath and of
the devil not yet convinced OF SIN" ICON.
verted born again. She had no more spiritual
bond with us, she thought than she had with
heather or Papist. She dared not even pray
for our conversion, earnestly as she prayed on
every other subject For though the majority Of
her sect would have done So her clear logical
sense would weld to no such tender inconsist-
ency Had it not been decided from all eternity
We were elect. or we were reprobste. Could
her PRAYERS alter that II He had chosen rs, he
would call US IN his own good time and IL not.
Only, again and again, as sterwsrd discovered
from journal OF hers, she used to beseech God
with aeonized tears to set her mind at rest by re-
yeaing to her His will toward us. For that com
fort she could at least nationally pray. But she
received no answer. Poor, beloved mother! Il
thou couldst not read the answer written IN every
sunbeam, wrttenin the very fact Of our existence
here al all, what answer would have suthced thee
And yet with all this she kept the strictest
watch over our morality, Fear, of course WAS
the only motive she employed for how could our
still carnal understandings be affected with love
to God And love to herself was too patry and
temporary to be urged by one who knew her life
was uncertain and who was always trying to Sc
down to the deepest eternal ground and reason OF
every thing, and take her stand upon that. so
our god or gods rather, till we were twelve years
old, were hell. The rod, the ten commandments
and public opinion Yet under them, not they,
but something deeper far, both in her and US, pre-
served US pure. Call II character, conformation
OF the sprit-conornaton OF the brain, II you
like, ii you scientific man ana phrenoio-
gist. ! never yet could dssect and map out my
own being, or my neighbours as you analysts do
10 me- / myself ay, and each person round me-
seem one lneXplicablc whole; to take away sin
gle iacnity whereof, is to destroy the harmony
the meaning, the life of all the rest That there
IS duality in usa lifelong battle between flesh
and splrt-we all, alas know well enough but
which is flesh and which is spirit what phoso
ophers IN these days can tell us Still less had
we two found out any such duality OR discord in
ourselves tor we Were gentle and ohedieut chill
dren. The pleasures OF the world did not tempt
us We did not know OF their existence; aud no
foundlings educated in nunnery ever grew up in
more yilgnal and spotess nnocence-if igno-
rance be such--than did Susan and |.
The narowness OF my sphere OF observation
only concentrated the faculty into greater
strength. The few natural objects which met
and they of course, constituted my whole outer
world (tor art and poetry were both tabooed both
by my rank and my mothers scctariansm, and
the study OF human beings only develops itself as
the DON grows INTO the man--tnGSe lew natural
objects, say, studied with intense keenness
| knew every Leaf and flower in the little front
garden; every cabbage and rhubarb plant in
Battersea-tieds was wonderful and beautiful to
me Clouds and water | learned to delight in,
from my occasional lingerings on Battersea
| Bridge, and yearning westward looks toward Tho
sun setting above rich meadows and wooded
gardens, to me forbidden Fl Dorado.
brought home wild flowers and chance beetles
and butterflies and porod over them, not in tho
spirit OF a naturalist but OF a poet They were TO
me Gods angels shining in coats mail and fairy
masquerading dresses. | envied them their
| beauty their freedom At last | made up my
mind in the simple tenderness of a child's con-
science, that it was wrong to rob them OF the
liberty for which ! pined-to take them away
from the beautiful broad country whittier onged
to follow them and used TO keep them day or
two, and then, regretiully carry them back, and
set them loose on the first opportunity, with
many compunctions of heart, when, as generally
happened, they had been starved to death in the
mean time.
They were my only recreations after the hours
of the small lay school at the neighborng chapel
where ! learnt to read, write, and sum- except
now and then, London walk, with my mother
holding my hand tight the whole way. She would
have hoodwinked me- stopped my ears with cot
ton and led me in a strlng-Iind, careful soul =
if / had been reasonably safe on crowded pave
ment, so fearful was she lest should be polluted
By some chance sight or sound OF the Babylon
which she feared and hated almost as much as
she did the bishops.
The only books which knew were the Pilgrims
Progress and the Bible. The former my
Shakspere, my Dante, my Ncdas, by which ex-
planned every fact and phenomenon OF litc. Lon
don was the city Of destruction from which was
to flee ] wns Christian; the Wicket of the way
OF Life ] had strangely identified with the turn.
pike at Batterseo-b bridge end and the rising
ground of Mortlake and Wimbledon was the land
of Beulah-the Enchanted Mountains Of the
Shepherds. If | could once get there, [ was
saved "a carnal view, perhaps, and a childish
one; but there was dim meaning and human
reality in it nevertheless.
AS for the Bible, | knew nothing of it really,
beyond the Old Testament. Indeed the life OF
Christ had little chance OF becoming interesting
to me My mother had given me formally to I'M
derstand that it spoke OF matters too deep for me;
that till converted the natural man could not
understand the things Of God = and | obtained
little more explanation Of it from the two unlntel-
gible, dreary sermons to which listened every
dreary Sunday, in terror lest a chance shuttle Oh
my feet or hint Of droWsiness-the natural
result Of the sitting gallery and windows and
easlights-should bring down a lecture and pun
ishment when returned home. Oh those Sab
baths days not OF rest but utter Wrctchedness,
when the beetles and the flowers we're put by,
and there was nothing to I'LL up the long vacuity
but books of which | could not understand a word;
when play, laughter or even stare out OF WIN
dow at the sinful, merry, Sabbath breaking prom
enaders, were al! forbidden as if the COM
mandment had run, " la it thou shalt take no man
ner of amusement, thou, nor thy son, nor thy
daughter b. what strange ascetlc perverson has
tint got to mean keeping holy the sabbath-day?'
Yet there was an hours relief in the evening.
when either nay mother told us Old Testament
stories, some preacher or two came in to supper
after meeting and used to sit in the corner and
listen to their talk not that understood word,
but the mere struggle to Understandable mere
watching my mothers earnest face-my pride IN
the reverent hattery with which the worthy men
addressed her as "a mother in Israel" were
enough to FIJI up the blank for me till bed time.
OF /" vita! Christianity" l heard much but With
all my efforts, could find ont nothing. Indeed, it
did not seem interesting enough TO tempt me TO