When a scene like this is closed by death, what an extinction of hopes! No parent, it may be remarked, ever thinks he can _spare a child_. Whatever be the number of his family, he is almost sure to be afflicted to exactly a certain degree by the loss of any individual infant; for simply this reason, that every one has established its own claim to his affections, by some peculiar trait of its appearance or character. It is a lovely and admirable trait of human nature, that the parent is rather apt to appreciate the lost child above all the rest. The impossibility of a realization of his hopes regarding that infant, just makes all those hopes the brighter, so that the twilight of the child’s _dead existence_ is more splendid than the broad day of its living life. The surviving babes are all more or less connected with the common-place of this world—the homeliness of nature; but that fair-haired innocent, which went to its place in the blush and dawn of its faculties, what might it not have been? Then, the stirring grief of parting with that face that was our own—that more than friend, though but an infant—to break off all the delightful ties of prattling tenderness, that had bound us, even in a few months, to that gentle form for ever! A sorrow like this is long in being altogether quenched; it comes in soft gushes into the heart for many future years, and subdues us in the midst of stronger and sterner feelings. The image lives always before us in unchanging infancy, and beauty, and innocence; it ever seems to be walking in our eyes, as of yore, with its bright curling hair, and its lightsome carol; and we long for heaven, that we may enjoy that no small portion of its pleasures—a restoration to the company of that mortal angel which has been reft away. FOOTNOTES: [5] This exquisite little hymn is extracted from a volume of excellent, but, we fear, neglected poetry, published under the title of “English Songs, and other Small Poems, by Barry Cornwall.” The real name of the author, we understand, is Proctor, and in him much of the old pure spirit of poetry has revived—the poetry of nature and of the affections. TEA-DRINKING.