r these thorny places as quickly as possible, I
gladly come back to the BABIES; with regard to whom I shall have no
prejudices, no affectation, no false pride, no sham fears to encounter;
every heart (except there be one made of flint) being with me here.
'Then were there brought unto him _little children_, that he should put
his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus
said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto me; for
of such is the kingdom of heaven.' A figure most forcibly expressive of
the character and beauty of innocence, and, at the same time, most aptly
illustrative of the doctrine of regeneration. And where is the man; the
_woman_ who is not fond of babies is not worthy the name; but where is
the _man_ who does not feel his heart softened; who does not feel
himself become gentler; who does not lose all the hardness of his
temper; when, in any way, for any purpose, or by any body, an appeal is
made to him in behalf of these so helpless and so perfectly innocent
little creatures?

246. SHAKSPEARE, who is cried up as the great interpreter of the human
heart, has said, that the man in whose soul there is no _music_, or love
of music, is 'fit for murders, treasons, stratagems, and spoils.' 'Our
_immortal_ bard,' as the profligate SHERIDAN used to call him in public,
while he laughed at him in private; our '_immortal_ bard' seems to have
forgotten that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were flung into the
fiery furnace (made seven times hotter than usual) amidst the sound of
the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music;
he seems to have forgotten that it was a music and a dance-loving damsel
that chose, as a recompense for her elegant performance, the bloody head
of John the Baptist, brought to her in a charger; he seems to have
forgotten that, while Rome burned, Nero fiddled: he did not know,
perhaps, that cannibals always dance and sing while their victims are
roasting; but he might have known, and he must have known, that
England's greatest tyrant, Henry VIII., had, as his agent in blood,
Thomas Cromwell, expressed it, 'his _sweet soul_ enwrapped in the
_celestial_ sounds of music;' and this was just at the time when the
ferocious tyrant was ordering Catholics and Protestants to be tied back
to back on the same hurdle, dragged to Smithfield on that hurdle, and
there tied to, and burnt from, the same stake. Shakspeare must have
known these thin