There are few women, we suppose, who have not seen something of children under five years of age, yet in "Compensation," a recent novel of the mind-and-millinery species, which calls itself a "story of real life," we have a child of four and a half years old talking in this Ossianic fashion--
"'Oh, I am so happy, dear gran'mamma;–I have seen,–I have seen such a delightful person: he is like everything beautiful,–like the smell of sweet flowers, and the view from Ben Lomond;–or no, better than that–he is like what I think of and see when I am very, very happy; and he is really like mamma, too, when she sings; and his forehead is like that distant sea,' she continued, pointing to the blue Mediterranean; 'there seems no end–no end; or like the clusters of stars I like best to look at on a warm fine night…… Don't look so….. your forehead is like Loch Lomond, when the wind is blowing and the sun is gone in; I like the sunshine best when the lake is smooth…… So now–I like it better than ever….. it is more beautiful still from the dark cloud that has gone over it, when the sun suddenly lights up all the colours of the forests and shining purple rocks, and it is all reflected in the waters below.'"
