“Amiable children! thus in innocence did you pass your first days. How often in this spot have your mothers, pressing you in their arms, thanked Heaven for the consolation you were preparing for them in their old age, and for the happiness of seeing you enter upon life under so happy auguries! How often, under the shadow of these rocks, have I shared, with them, your out-door repasts _which had cost no animals their lives_. Gourds full of milk, of newly-laid eggs, of rice cakes upon banana leaves, baskets laden with potatoes, with mangoes, with oranges, with pomegranates, with bananas, with dates, with ananas, offered at once the most wholesome meats, the most beautiful colours, and the most agreeable juices. The conversation was as refined and gentle as their food.” The humaneness of their manners had attracted to the charming arbour, which they had formed for themselves, all kinds of beautiful birds, who sought there their daily meals and the caresses of their human protectors. Our readers will not be displeased to be reminded of this charming scene:-- “Virginie loved to repose upon the slope of this fountain, which was decorated with a pomp at once magnificent and wild. Often would she come there to wash the household linen beneath the shade of two cocoa-nut trees. Sometimes she led her goats to feed in this place; and, while she was preparing cheese from their milk, she pleased herself in watching them as they browsed the herbage upon the precipitous sides of the rocks, and supported themselves in mid-air upon one of the jutting points as upon a pedestal. Paul, seeing that this spot was loved by Virginie, brought from the neighbouring forest the nests of all sorts of birds. The fathers and mothers of these birds followed their little ones, and came and established themselves in this new colony. Virginie would distribute to them from time to time grains of rice, maize, and millet. As soon as she appeared, the blackbirds, the _bengalis_, whose flight is so gentle, the cardinals, whose plumage is of the colour of fire, quitted their bushes; parroquets, green as emerald, descended from the neighbouring lianas, partridges ran along under the grass--all advanced pell-mell up to her feet like domestic hens. Paul and she delighted themselves with their transports of joy, with their eager appetites, and with their loves.” In his views upon national education, St. Pierre invites the serious attention of legislators and educators to the importance of accustoming the young to the nourishment prescribed by Nature:--