We hear much talk about bright, and smart, and clever, and pre- cocious children. What is this precocity but receptivity to im- pressions, sensibility to influences? Would any child be " wiser than the ancients" without such contact? Do they come into the wt)rld revealing things to us or do we reveal things to them ? It is the parent's hand that draws aside the curtain and shov/s its child the play upon the mimic stage of life. It is the parent's voice that 64 THE hearthstone; or, life at home. teaches truth or error little by little, day by day, unconscious of the tremendous results of that teaching to the child. Some people think the infant baptism practised by the older Christian churches a sense- less form and great absurdity. But its real sense seems to me to be the witness it bears to this great truth, that as soon as life begins, influences and education begin also. Let us glance at the childhood of some typical precocious child. Hartley Coleridge is the first that occurs to my mind. ' This is what his brother Derwent tells us of him, and it illustrates the principles I have just stated. " By nature not less than by circumstances he was indeed the poet-child of a poet-father. ... I have heard my mother say that when he was first taken to London, being then a child in arms, and saw the lamps, he exclaimed, * O ! now I know what the stars are — they are lamps that have been good upon earth, and have gone up into heaven.' " And in the diary of Henry Crabb Robinson is the following entry under date of August the 8th, 181 1 : "After- wards stepped to Charles Lamb's. Coleridge there, who related some curious anecdotes of his son Hartley, whom he represented to be a most remarkable child — a deep thinker even in his infancy. He tormented himself in his attempts to solve the problems that would equally torment the full-grown man, if the world, and its cares and pleasures did not distract his attention. Hartley, when about five years old, was aske(4 a question about himself being called Hartley. ' Which Hartley ? ' asked the boy. ' Why ! is there more than one Hartley?' 'Yes,' he replied; * there's a deal of Hartleys.' 'How so ? ' ' There's Picture-Hartley (Hazlitt had painted a portrait of him), and Shadow-Hartley, and there's Echo-Hartley, and there's Catch-me-fast-Hartley ; ' at the same time seizing his own arm with the other hand very eagerly^ — an action which shows that his mind must have been drawn to reflect on what Kant calls the great and inexplicable mystery, viz. : that man should be both his own subject and object, and that these two should be one. At the same early age, continued Coleridge, Hartley used to be in an agony of thought, puzzling himself about the reality of existence. As when some one THE BABV IN THE HOME. 65 said to him, ' It is not now, but it is to be.' ' But,' said he, * if it is to be, it is.' Perhaps this confusion of thought lay not merely in the im- perfection of language. Hartley, when a child, had no pleasure in things ; they made no impression on him till they had undergone a process in his mind, and were become thoughts and feelings."

AI-modernized reading of the original text

We hear much talk about bright, and smart, and clever, and precocious children. What is this precocity but receptivity to impressions, sensibility to influences? Would any child be " wiser than the ancients" without such contact? Do they come into the world revealing things to us or do we reveal things to them ? It is the parent's hand that draws aside the curtain and shows its child the play upon the mimic stage of life. It is the parent's voice that 64 THE hearthstone; or, life at home. teaches truth or error little by little, day by day, unconscious of the tremendous results of that teaching to the child. Some people think the infant baptism practised by the older Christian churches a senseless form and great absurdity. But its real sense seems to me to be the witness it bears to this great truth, that as soon as life begins, influences and education begin also. Let us glance at the childhood of some typical precocious child. Hartley Coleridge is the first that occurs to my mind. ' This is what his brother Derwent tells us of him, and it illustrates the principles I have just stated. " By nature not less than by circumstances he was indeed the poet-child of a poet-father. ... I have heard my mother say that when he was first taken to London, being then a child in arms, and saw the lamps, he exclaimed, * O ! now I know what the stars are — they are lamps that have been good upon earth, and have gone up into heaven.' " And in the diary of Henry Crabb Robinson is the following entry under date of August the 8th, 181 1 : "Afterwards stepped to Charles Lamb's. Coleridge there, who related some curious anecdotes of his son Hartley, whom he represented to be a most remarkable child — a deep thinker even in his infancy. He tormented himself in his attempts to solve the problems that would equally torment the full-grown man, if the world, and its cares and pleasures did not distract his attention. Hartley, when about five years old, was aske(4 a question about himself being called Hartley. ' Which Hartley ? ' asked the boy. ' Why ! is there more than one Hartley?' 'Yes,' he replied; * there's a deal of Hartleys.' 'How so ? ' ' There's Picture-Hartley (Hazlitt had painted a portrait of him), and Shadow-Hartley, and there's Echo-Hartley, and there's Catch-me-fast-Hartley ; ' at the same time seizing his own arm with the other hand very eagerly^ — an action which shows that his mind must have been drawn to reflect on what Kant calls the great and inexplicable mystery, viz. : that man should be both his own subject and object, and that these two should be one. At the same early age, continued Coleridge, Hartley used to be in an agony of thought, puzzling himself about the reality of existence. As when some one said to him, ' It is not now, but it is to be.' ' But,' said he, * if it is to be, it is.' Perhaps this confusion of thought lay not merely in the imperfection of language. Hartley, when a child, had no pleasure in things ; they made no impression on him till they had undergone a process in his mind, and were become thoughts and feelings."

The hearthstone; or, Life at home