I have made all sorts of discoveries, to me
astonishing and delightful, about my children. I recognise some of
their qualities and modes of thought; but there are whole ranges of
qualities apparent, of which I cannot even guess the origin. One
thinks of a child as deriving its nature from its parents, and its
experience from its surroundings; but there is much beside that,
original views, unexpected curiosities, and, strangest of all,
things that seem almost like dim reminiscences floated out of other
far-off lives. They seem to infer so much that they have never
heard, to perceive so much that they have never seen, to know so
much that they have never been told. Bewildering as this is in the
intellectual region, it is still more marvellous in the moral
region. They scorn, they shudder at, they approve, they love, as by
some generous instinct, qualities of which they have had no
experience. "I don't know what it is, but there is something wrong
about Cromwell," said Maggie gravely, when we had been reading the
history of the Commonwealth. Now Cromwell is just one of those
characters which, as a rule, a child accepts as a model of rigid
virtue and public spirit. Alec, whose taste is all for soldiers and
sailors just now, and who might, one would have thought, have been
dazzled by military glory, pronounced Napoleon "rather a common
man.
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