(To be concluded in our next.)

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SPIRIT OF THE Public Journals

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THE IDIOT.—­AN ANECDOTE.

Every reader of dramatic history has heard of Garrick’s contest with Madam Clairon, and the triumph which the English Roscius achieved over the Siddons of the French stage, by his representation of the father struck with fatuity on beholding his only infant child dashed to pieces by leaping in its joy from his arms:  perhaps the sole remaining conquest for histrionic tragedy is somewhere in the unexplored regions of the mind, below the ordinary understanding, amidst the gradations of idiotcy.  The various shades and degrees of sense and sensibility which lie there unknown, Genius, in some gifted moment, may discover.  In the meantime, as a small specimen of its undivulged dramatic treasures, we submit to our readers the following little anecdote:—­

A poor widow, in a small town in the north of England, kept a booth or stall of apples and sweetmeats.  She had an idiot child, so utterly helpless and dependent, that he did not appear to be ever alive to anger or self-defence.

He sat all day at her feet, and seemed to be possessed of no other sentiment of the human kind than confidence in his mother’s love, and a dread of the schoolboys, by whom he was often annoyed.  His whole occupation, as he sat on the ground, was in swinging backwards and forwards, singing “pal-lal” in a low pathetic voice, only interrupted at intervals on the appearance of any of his tormentors, when he clung to his mother in alarm.

From morning to evening he sang his plaintive and aimless ditty; at night, when his poor mother gathered up her little wares to return home, so deplorable did his defects appear, that while she carried her table on her head, her stock of little merchandize in her lap, and her stool in one hand, she was obliged to lead him by the other.  Ever and anon as any of the schoolboys appeared in view, the harmless thing clung close to her, and hid his face in her bosom for protection.

A human creature so far below the standard of humanity was no where ever seen; he had not even the shallow cunning which is often found among these unfinished beings; and his simplicity could not even be measured by the standard we would apply to the capacity of a lamb.  Yet it had a feeling rarely manifested even in the affectionate dog, and a knowledge never shown by any mere animal.

He was sensible of his mother’s kindness, and how much he owed to her care.  At night when she spread his humble pallet, though he knew not prayer, nor could comprehend the solemnities of worship, he prostrated himself at her feet, and as he kissed them, mumbled a kind of mental orison, as if in fond and holy devotion.  In the morning, before she went abroad to resume her station in the market-place, he peeped anxiously out to reconnoitre the street, and as often as he saw any of the schoolboys in the way, he held her firmly back, and sang his sorrowful “pal-lal.”