these creatures, something mortal to evil spirits, and a cradled infant in the house is sure talisman against all demoniac possession. What is it, in fact, which man requires, in order to escape from this _athumia_, this exhaustion of the heart? Hope--a future. He must have a faith in the future. This is the nourishment of his soul; without it he cannot live, he despairs and dies. Well, the very charm of children, that which has ranked them, from of old, amongst the blessings of God, is this, that they form the future of every family-- that they sustain in every house that sentiment by which the soul of man lives. Children represent the future, and in a form the most joyous and attractive. It is this which constitutes their irresistible fascination--it is this which sheds around their little heads that light of happiness and joy which reflects itself on the countenances of the parents--which warms the heart--which gives to the poor the force to labour, and to the miserable the force to live. Blessed be infancy, which chases the demon!--Blessed be infancy, which keeps alive in each family the sentiment of hope, indispensable to run as the air and the light! Amongst the faults of his contemporaries, M. Girardin remarks a disposition to _materialize_ the expression of passion, depicting it constantly by violent physical distortions; and also, a tendency to carry that expression to the extremity of rage, where, as he finely observes, all distinction between the various passions is lost, and man deserts his rational nature. According to the ancient classic imagination, when passion becomes excessive, the man disappears; and this, he adds, is the foundation of what we call the philosophy of the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid. In the course of this censure he makes use of a common-place expression, which, we think, includes a common-place error, and therefore we pause for a moment to take notice of it. "It is the pretension of modern art," he tells us, "to say all. What then is left to the imagination of the public? It is often well to trust to the spectator to complete the idea of the poet or the statuary." This is a mode of expression frequently made use of. Even Lessing has sanctioned it, when in his _Laocoon_, he speaks of "the highest expression leaving nothing to the imagination."