aged person, to all appearance, that ever came under my eyes, was an
infant--hardly eight months old. He was the illegitimate son of a poor
idiot girl, who had herself been shamefully ill treated; and the poor
infant, falling under the care of an enraged grandmother, who felt
herself at once burdened and disgraced, was certainly not better treated.
He was dying, when I saw him, of a lingering malady, with features
expressive of frantic misery; and it seemed to me that he looked at the
least three centuries old. One might have fancied him one of Swift's
strulbrugs, that, through long attenuation and decay, had dwindled back
into infancy, with one organ only left perfect--the organ of fear and
misery.

[20] This was a manoeuvre regularly taught to the Austrian cavalry in the
middle of the last century; as a ready way of opening the doors of
cottages.




CHAPTER III.

INFANT LITERATURE.


"_The child_," says Wordsworth, "_is father of the man;_" thus calling
into conscious notice the fact, else faintly or not at all perceived,
that whatsoever is seen in the maturest adult, blossoming and bearing
fruit, must have preexisted by way of germ in the infant. Yes; all
that is now broadly emblazoned in the man once was latent--seen or not
seen--as a vernal bud in the child. But not, therefore, is it true