Lessons for Little Ones.

LOVE TO ANIMALS.

BY PETER PARLEY.

God loves all things. He kisses them in his sun-shine, fondles them in the summer breezes, and joy is in their eyes and in their hearts. Plants and flowers, beasts and birds, fishes and insects, all feel the law of love from their Creator.

The plants bloom in beauty, the beasts skip and play in rapture, the birds sing in sweetest melodies, the fish leap joyfully in the limpid stream, and insects dance in delight in the sunny air.

Love is everywhere. The love of Him, who is all love, dwells in every creature, the constant spring of all that is. Little girls and boys, who have not love in their hearts for all that lives, are very far from deserving the love of their good Creator.

And yet there are many little girls and boys, and, alas, many grown-up men and women, who, although they may feel quite certain that it is right to "love one another," have very little love to the things God has made for their use, much less to those which seem to be of no use to them.

Some cruel men will, for their sport only, sadly ill-use that noblest of animals-the horse. It was but yesterday that Peter Parley read an accouut of a steeple-chase, as it is called, in which horses are made to leap over high rails, deep ditches, stakes, and hedges. In this steeplechase no less than five horses were obliged to be killed after the race; three had their backs broken, and two their legs snapped.

Now, little boys do not ride steeple-chases; but they will train themselves to this kind of sport by wanting love and kindness to the things that are around them.

But of this they may be sure, that every cruel act will so harden the heart and render the mind so dead to the voice of humanity, that as they grow up to be men, the love of cruelty will prevail in them and disgrace their name and nature.

Many children are unkind to animals from sheer want of thought. But the same law that teaches men and women not to do to others what they would not like done to themselves, ought to keep boys and girls from hurting such things as they may chance to have power over, for the abuse of power is a great crime.

After God had made all things and pronounced them good, he made man in his own image, full of sense and goodness. He gave him dominion over the fowls of the air, and the fish of the sea, and every living thing that moveth upon the earth. But man was not to be their tyrant.

"What is a tyrant?" you inquire. A tyrant is one who uses his might against the law of right, who acts according to his own will, who enslaves, imprisons, kills, and destroys whoever and whatever he pleases, and will suffer no one to call him to account; you read of such men in every history of the world.

There are many ways of being tyrants-there are many ways of being cruel. It is cruel to rob a bird of its young. It is cruel to set a trap for a bird, to put it in a cage, for a cage is a prison; and a boy is nothing better than a jailer, nay, much worse, for he is jailer and tyrant too. Do not think that nice food and seeds, and even care and attention, can be any compensation to the bird deprived of its liberty. Liberty is the greatest gift of God to man, the greatest gift he has given to the beast, the bird, and the insect, and when we deprive any of God's creatures of that gift, all the love and the kindness we can show them is but poor recompense.

Man has enslaved the horse, the dog, the camel, the reindeer, and many other animals. They do his bidding, bear his burdens, and use a life of freedoin and happiness for one of pain and labour. They groan and wince under

the lash, the curb, or the chain. They wear their lives away in sorrow, in the close stall, the confined crib, or the fenced yard. Their youth is spent in effort and labour, their old age in pain and misery, with bruised bones, seared skins, and blind eyes. What can make amends for this?-nothing but kindness; and even then we are still the animals' debtors for more than we can ever pay.

Many little boys and girls who would think it wrong to be wilfully cruel, are very unfeeling and forgetful. How many there are who doat upon pets. Yet, the fate of pets is usually unfortunate, and, very frequently, through the neglectful conduct of those who love them.

It is very common for boys to keep rabbits, and for girls to keep canaries. At first we find those who pet them very attentive; they feed them, often over-feed them, watch them, and fondle over them; after a little while some other favourite object engrosses their attention, and the pet is left, not unfrequently, to perish by some accident that care would have prevented, or to die of starvation.

A young friend of mine, Edwin, was a kind-hearted boy enough, but he was very inconstant; he would take a violent affection to a thing; but this affection soon went off, and he became in a few days as cold and heartless as he seemed to be warm and full of love.

On one occasion he had seen a squirrel at the shop of a dealer in birds and fancy animals, and he was delighted to see it turn round and round in its little cage, and he would stand and watch it for a long time, as he went to and from his school every day. At last he prevailed upon his mamma to give him the sum required for the purchase of the animal, and having obtained it, brought it home in great glee. It had a place allotted to it in Edwin's own play-room; and the boy had several projects in his head to make his squirrel more and more happy. So squirrey was pampered and fed. Every week Edwin laid out the greater part of his pocket-money in the purchase of nuts for his pet, and he carefully cleaned its cage every morning before breakfast, and hung it up in his place every night. Squirrey grew tame, and would suffer Edwin to take him in and out of the cage, and to play with him; and Edwin was very fond of and very proud of his pet.

And he might have remained so for some time longer, but one of his young friends had purchased a magpie, |which he had taught to talk; and a very talkative bird it was, and a very merry one, too. It hopped and jumped about, and seemed to care for nobody; it chattered, and fluttered, and turned its head on one side to look up at you with such provoking assurance, that everybody laughed at and admired the magpie. Edwin was entranced from that moment-the fate of poor squirrey was sealed. A magpie Edwin was determined to have.

Now, it so happened, that master magpie was not only a very talkative bird-he was also a very meddlesome one. He did not exactly respect the property of others, so Edwin found no difficulty in purchasing magpie; but while the negotiation was going on, and the money was being hoarded, poor squirrey severely suffered. His supply of nuts was at first reduced, and now and then his bread-and-milk was forgotten. Squirrey felt every day the pangs of hunger, and he longed for the green trees, where he could find a profusion of food for winter stores; but the bars of his prison were strong. At last, one day—it was the day the magpie came home, his supply of food quite failed. Squirrey determined to break prison, and forced his head between the bars of his cage; he could not get his body through, however, and alas, owing to the projections of his ears, could not get his head back again, and was thus strangled.

I will leave my young readers to imagine the feelings of this inconstant boy upon his beholding his pet dead at the bottom of his cage. I will not describe his sobbings and lamentations. There was no one to mark them but

magpie, who was hopping about the play-room, and at last hopped to the top of the dead squirrel's cage, and looking obliquely down upon Edwin, said, with a roguish leer, "you are a stupid."

Edwin was more than a stupid; but still the set phrase of the magpie had its effect upon him. "I have been," said he to himself, "stupid indeed, and wicked, too." And so my young friends are all they, who neglect those whom they are bound to cherish and to love. They who are fond of pets should reflect, that when they have them, they incur a kind of responsibility; they are bound to feed them, and to care for them, and if they fail in this, they are really very wicked; while the habit of inconstancy, and of fickleness, will render them in mature years both dangerous and despicable among their fellow creatures, who will put neither faith nor trust in them.

THE FREEDOM OF KNOWLEDGE. "Our needful knowledge, like our needful food, Unhedged lies open in life's common field, And bids all welcome to the vital feast."

YOUNG.

Nor quite opened, nor unhedged-for this planet of ours, (let who may prove the contrary, it is ours as long as we are in it,) this rounded, condensed, undulating, mysterious little planet, is not quite so open and unhedged as bards have sung.

Poets, owing to their peculiarly sensitive temperament, have, naturally enough, loved to depict only the more sunny side of subjects, one glimpse of the darker having sometimes proved sufficient to plunge them into a fatal melancholy, if not to kill them outright.

For this reason many, old poets especially, are to be read with reservation. As regards the living, with cordial satisfaction the world perceives that the poetical constitution is becoming stronger, at the same time that its temperament loses nothing of its exquisite and distinguishing sensibility.

The poets and poetesses of this generation have brave hearts, and rise into their own serene altitude strong and radiant, as heaven designed that they should. Flinging aside earth, mists, and fetters, they soar aloft, and, with calm light, circle steadily in their appointed path.

Serene, secure for the power that awoke nourishes the divine afflation, and will sustain it until the spiritual, the vital, be fully revealed and triumphant.

In the mean time this heavy earth grates to the old

tune, and we also think that

"Our needful knowlege and our needful food,"

is not quite unhedged and open. In plain prose, they have, somehow, got enclosed in preserves, as though Heaven's bounties needed this conservative care of man;-turn which way we will, we are hedged in, hedged up, or hedged out.

In fact, there are so many hedges and ditches, divisions and subdivisions, not to mention subtileties crept in, and up, and over the fair surface of the earth, that it seems as if the whole of it had fallen into the power of some other than its Creator-some grasping Mammon who has gathered it all in, inch by inch, unto himself.

"Unhedged lies open-." This, after all, could only have been Young's satirical way of politely suggesting, he meant it as a gentle hint to unhedge, open, and bid all welcome, for he could not but feel that man ought to permit a free and healthful circulation of God's good gifts round the world;

and civilized life,-up into even our noblest and holiest institutions, until love has been again driven into the wilderness, and well nigh perished from the earth.

But though scoffed at, and almost scoffed out, love shall yet have room and fair play, until it flow into the channels Providence has provided for it.

How!. Are we to drain off God's free gifts, the leaven of the earth into reservoirs; are they, before circulation, to be consecrated, and protected, and patronized, and locked up for fear of thieves?

Instead of flowing freely, are the waters of life to be measured out in small measure to the weary and athirst, by delegates, selected and paid for their great trouble and philanthropy?

Are God's free bequests to be sold by man retail? Heaven's curse is on all monopoly.

Interchange and circulation denote general health, as vast accumulation is but a symptom of disease somewhere; and arom out that somewhere, sooner or later, stalk famine, pestilence, and death, with their blighting breath, which the impartial winds aid to carry far and near, high and low.

Universal, not individual interest, is the keystone of society, and devastation upon devastation, until this law of nature is recognised and acted out.

Protection, partition-walls, with their age-enduring denials-let men build them higher and higher; but the greater will be the downfall and confusion.

It is not protection, it is faith we want,-the faith that shall remove mountains! The faith, at whose bidding the barren rock shall yield that living stream, whose billows are to sap the foundation of the throne of darkness! E. C- -ON.

THE CLOCK.

tion from hour to hour by striking upon a bell, thus Ir indicates the time of day, and it declares the transivisibly and audibly proclaiming the same thing. Through long use, it has become indispensable to the regulation of our undertakings and engagements. We can propose to accomplish nothing without the clock. Only at its summons do we rise from sleep, return to rest, eat, drink, labour, play, and visit our friends. Before the from their teachers, or even the garments from their servants may be released from their tasks, the children bodies, the clock must be consulted.

Under its sanction

are we assembled for worship; weekly, by its authority, are the temple gates unbarred, the market-booths erected, the carrier's cart despatched. He who disputes an oracle so popular as the parish-clock, is suspected of heresy against that catholic agreement and concurrence, without which time icelf goes wrong. Sick and poor, wise and foolish, hear his sovereign admonitions every hour that they have their respective duties to consider. Gravest of moralists, loudest of preachers, most inflexible, yet most equitable of despots, the clock resides in a lofty place. He reigns supreme over his own church and people; he is sole defender of the parish faith; he is a just, yet a paternal king.— Fountain of Arethusa.

"As sunbeams stream through liberal space,
And nothing jostle or displace——

80 free be all God's gifts, else, by that immutable law stamped upon his work at the creation, blessings become

curses.

"OUR FATHER!"

"Many of the children told me they always said their prayers at night, and the prayer they said was 'Our Father.' I naturally thought they meant that they repeated the Lord's Prayer, but I soon found that few of them knew it. They only repeated the first two words; they knew no more than 'Our Father.' These poor

children, after their laborious day's work, (nail-making, japanning, screw-making,) lying down to sleep with this simple appeal, seemed to me inexpressibly affecting."-Report of the Commissioners on the Employment of Children; Evidence of R. H. Horne,

town of Wolverhampton.

Pale, struggling blossoms of mankind,

Born only to endure,

White helpless slaves whom Christians bind,

Sad children of the poor!

Ye walk in rags, ye breathe in dust,

With souls too dead to ask

For aught beyond a scanty crust,
And Labour's grinding task.

Ye ne'er have heard the code of love,

Of Hope's eternal light;

Ye are not led to look above
The clouds of earthly night;
And yet 'mid ignorance and toil,
Your lips, that ne'er have known
The "milk and honey" of the soil,
Sleep not before they own

"Our Father!"

Unheeded workers in the marts

Of England's boasted wealth, Ye, who may carry ulcered hearts,

If hands but keep their health;

Ye, whose young eyes have never watched

June's roses come and go,

Whose hard-worn fingers ne'er have snatched
The spring flowers as they blow;
Who slave beneath the summer sun,
With dull and torpid brain,

Ye, who lie down when work is done,
To rise and work again;

Oh, even ye, poor joyless things,
Rest not, before you pray;
Striving to mount on fettered wings

To Him who hears you say,
"Our Father!"

Proud easy tenants of the earth,

Ye who have fairer lots;

Who live with plenty, love, and mirth,

On Fortune's golden spots;

Ye, who but eat, laugh, drink, and sleep,
Who walk 'mid Eden's bloom,
Who know not what it is to weep
O'er Poverty's cold tomb;

Oh, turn one moment from your way,
And learn what these can teach.

Deign in your rosy path to stay,

And hear the "untaught " preach;
Then to your homes so bright and fair,
And think it good to pray;
Since the sad children of despair,
Can kneel in thanks, and say,

"Our Father!'

ELIZA COOK.

DIAMOND DUST.

THE sun of popularity sometimes shines upon a flower which prematurely opens its buds and discloses all its glowing beuties, but expires amidst the chilling frost of night.

A CONSCIENCE void of offence is an inestimable

blessing, because it gives a pleasure which no rancorings of malice can destroy; it is proof against malignity itself, and smiles upon its most sanguinary efforts.

A DEEP and profound knowledge of ourselves will never fail to curb the emotions we may feel at the foibles of others. We shall have learnt the difficulty of correcting our own habits too well to suppose it easy in them; and instead of making them the objects of our sarcasm, they will become the objects of our pity and our prayers.

CHILD.-A draft on the bank of time.

He who is not loved, is alone everywhere, and with every one.

THE child that thinks at all, thinks like a poet.

The light of duty, when fully clear, casts no shadow of hesitation.

ALL the honourable pursuits of life are salutary, provided they are not sought with too great avidity, and at the price of integrity and happiness.

TIME is infinitely long, and each day is a vessel into which a great deal may be poured, if one will actually fill it up.

THERE is something in the last hour of the day, if it have been itself a happy one, which seems to concentrate all the pleasant things of the past. It is like a fine evening sky, calm and sweet, and full of rays, that are all the rosier, because they are the last.

THE vine twig shows not more ingenuity as it traverses some rocky crag in search of the cool stream, at once its luxury and its life, than does our injured self-love, in seeking for consolation from the inevitable casualties of fate, and the irresistible strokes of fortune.

MEN may learn from example how mistaken is the idea, that the possession of power leads to independence, or enables them to pursue their own will. If there is any station in life in which we can do as we please, it will be found much nearer the extreme of the beggar, than that of the king.

SUPERSTITION, like many other fancies, very easy loses in power, when, instead of flattering our vanity, it stands in its way.

POETRY, like truth, is a' common flower. God has sown it over the earth like the daisies, sprinkled with tears, or glowing in the sun, even as he places the crocus and the March frosts together, and beautifully mingles life and death.

FORCE may be put down by force, but a well-disposed child, inclined to love and sympathy, has little to oppose to scorn and ill-will.

THE change of day and night-of the seasons, of flowers and fruits, and whatever else meets us from epoch to epoch, so that we can and should enjoy it; these are the proper springs of earthly life. The more open we are to these enjoyments, the happier do we feel ourselves; but, if the changes in these phenomena roll up and down before us without our taking interest in them, if we are insensible to such beautiful offers, then comes on the greatest evil, the heaviest disease; we regard life as a disgusting burden.

Printed and Published for the Proprietor, by JoHN OWEN CLARKE, (of No. 9, Hemingford Terrace, East, in the Parish of St. Mary, Islington, in the County of Middlesex) at his Printing Office, No. 3, Raquet Court, Fleet Street, in the Parish of St. Bride, in the City of London. Saturday, August 11, 1849.