fered with her, to know that Phebe Bartlett was ostentatiously converted at four; that Jane Turell "asked many astonishing questions about divine mysteries," before she was five; and that an infant son of Cotton Mather's "made a most edifying end in praise and prayer," at the age of two years and seven months. We cannot forget the less happy children who, instead of developing into baby prodigies or baby prigs, fretted out their helpless hearts in nightly fears of Hell.
Nor is there in the whole of this painful precocity one redeeming touch of human childhood, such as that joyous setting forth of the little St. Theresa and her brother to convert the inhabitants of Morocco, and be martyred for their faith; an enterprise as natural to keenly imaginative children of the sixteenth century as was the expedition two hundred years later of the six little Blue Coat boys, who, without map, chart, or compass, without luggage, provisions, or money, started out one bright spring morning to find Philip Quarll's Island. Sunlight and shadow are not farther apart than the wholesome love of adventure which religion as well as history and fairy-lore can
