It is surprising how much children tend to humanise and soften the stern scene of general life. The man who is so fortunate as to possess one or more children, finds it less easy to be wicked than if he had none; and, however evilly disposed any man may be, he will hardly give way to his wicked tendencies in the presence of his children. There is something holy in a child. Its innocence puts it in association with all gentle and devout feelings; and scarcely any parent will venture deliberately to contaminate the bright image of heavenly purity, which the Father of heaven has himself placed under his charge. Even the infidel can never form the wish that his child should be the same; he may dare many things, upon the peril of his own soul, but he cannot dare to hazard the soul of his child. His own mind may be torn by the demons of doubt and error, but he will keep his child steadfast if he can, melting nightly at the infantine prayer, which he cannot offer up himself. If a parent has been imprudent, and now suffers the bitter effects of his folly, in misfortunes which have exposed him to the contempt of mankind, here still is a resource. He can steal by night to the couch of his children, and, beside the unconscious babes, whose fate hangs all upon his, and who yet reprove not, in their silent innocence, the guilt which has exposed them to misery, weep himself into good resolutions, and into comfort. One of the chief sources of a parent’s pleasure in contemplating children, lies in the prospects which it is impossible to avoid forming regarding their future lives. No parent ever contemplates an unhappy fate for his child: all the look-forward is sunny as its own sweet eyes—stainless as its uncorrupted heart. There is even hardly any parent who rests content with hoping that his children will be as fortunate and as happy as himself. They must be much more so: they must reach heights of distinction far above any he had ever presumed to expect for himself. To the parent who has occasion to lament his unhappy circumstances in life, what treasured consolation there is in these fond imaginings! The father, as he broods moodily over enterprises blighted, and a spirit confined for immediate bread to some narrow scene of action unworthy of its energies—one casual glance alights upon the fair brow of his child, the bitter present gives way to the glorious future, and all his own griefs are repaid by the prospective happiness of his offspring. The mother who looks back to the comforts of an early home, unhappily exchanged for a scene of care and woe, feels, as she bends over her unconscious infant, her former happiness arise in the prospects of that endeared being, and is for the time consoled. It is this habit of forming flattering anticipations respecting the fates of our children, that renders the loss of them in infancy so very severe a calamity. In reality, the life of a child is