WHAT says Eome to childhood ?
Kome says every thing. The Church of
Rome is the church of childhood. Lead chil-
dren into her precincts, and you wiU soon dis-
cover that she pours through every avenue of
the mind of childhood treasures of wisdom. The
altar, the crucifix, the robed priests, the sur-
pliced acolytes, the pic*^ures and the statues of



CHILDHOOD. 175

holy saints, the stained windows, the oi^an, the
bells, — all combine together to give to the child's
picturesque-loving mind, a beiter and more sub-
lime idea of religion than years of reading aiud
preaching can do.
" These metMnks
Toneli children as akin to the unseen,
The infinite and wild that speak of heaven,
The image hid in chambers of the heart
Which pants for the ideal, in a soul
Fresh from the hands of God." *

Thus the Catholic Church, like her divine
Master, draws from the mouth of babes and
euckhngs her most perfect praise.
" From the embraces of the CathoUc Church,"
says an eloquent writer, " the true mother au-
gust, even in her most sorrowful moments drop-
ping a tender tear, no child left to its own sweet
nature has ever yet been seen to recoil ; for not
only the spirit of those who represent her, like
genius, loves to caress little things, and sing the
songs of children, to talk not always of kings
and magnates, — ' arma virumque cano,' — but

• Baptistry.
!76 BOMB.
