The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

A Calendar.

August

1st.--5th.

6th. Transfiguration of our Lord. Read--St. Luke ix. 23-46.

7th.--9th

10th. St Laurence 258. Add verse to hymn as above.
Praise fore the young St. Laurence so pitiful to pain,
But who himself was tortured, through tyrant's lust of gain.
Alas! that heated iron bars should form the cruel bed
Of one who ever blessed the Lord until his spirit fled.

11th St. Clara 1253. Add verse to hymn as above.
We praise Thee for St. Clara, Assisi's noble maid,
Who laid aside her worldly rank and sought St. Francis' aid:
Founded a holy sisterhood and lived by rule austere,
Till called by heavenly voices to cease her penance here.

12th. James Russell Lowell died, 1891. Read the Vision of Sir Launfal or these extracts from it.
       Not only around our infancy
       Doth heaven and all its splendours lie;
       Daily, with souls that cringe and plot,
       We Sinais climb and know it not.

       Over our manhood bend the skies"
       Against our fallen and traitor lives
       The great winds utter prophecies:
       With our faint hearts the mountain strives:
       Its arms outstretched, the Druid wood
       Waits with its benedicite:
       And to our age's drowsy blood
       Still shouts the inspiring sea."

13th.--14th.

15th. Sir Walter Scott born 1771. Read--
       Still, with fain fondness, could I trace
       Anew, each kind familiar face
       That brightened at our evening fire;
       From the thatched mansions grey-haired sire,
       Wise without learning, plain and good,
       And sprung of Scotland's gentler blood,
       Whose eye in age, quick, clear, and keen,
       Showed what in youth its glance had been;
       Whose doom discording neighbours sought,
       Content with equity unbought;
       To him the venerable Priest,
       Our frequent and familiar guest,
       Whose life and manners well could paint
       Alike the student and the saint;
       Alas! whose speech too oft I broke
       With gambol rude and timeless joke,
       For I was wayward, bold, and wild,
       A self-willed imp, a grandame's child;
       But half a plague and half a jest
       Was still endured, beloved, caressed.

       From me, thus natured, dost thou ask
       The classics poet's will-conned task?
       Nay, Erskine, nay--on the wild hill
       Let the wild heath bell flourish still;
       Cherish the tulip, pune the vine,
       But freely let the woodbine twine,
       And leave untrimmed the gelatin."
       Marmion.

16th.

17th. Frederick the Great died, 1786, Read--
"Friedrich's Life-battle is fought out; instead of suffering and sore labour he is now at rest." . . .

"Friedrich is by no means one of the perfect demigods, and there are various things to be said against him with good ground. To the last a questionable hero, with much in him which one could have wished not there, and much wanting which one could have wished. But there is one feature which strikes you at any early period of enquiry, that in his way he is a Reality; that he always means what he speaks; grounds his actions, too, on what he recognizes for the truth; and, in short, has nothing whatever of the hypocrite or phantasm, which some readers will admit to be an extremely rare phenomenon." . . .

"A Friedrich getting lonely enough, and the lights of his life going out around him, has but one sure consolation, which comes to him as a compulsion withal and is not neglected, that of standing steadfast to his work, whatever the mood and posture be.". . .

"'Let them bear in mind,' he ordered, 'that the least peasant, yea, what is still more, that even a beggar, is, no less than His Majesty, a human being, and one whom due justice must be meted out.". . .

"The king was visibly affected and said, 'You don't need to thank me; when my subjects fall into misfortune it is my duty to help them up again; for that reason I am here'". . .

"A man adjusted to his hard circumstances, and bearing himself manlike and kinglike among them."

"Neglects nothing, great or small, while life yet is."--Carlyle's "Frederick the Great."

18th.--19th.

20th. St. Bernard 1153. Add verse to hymn as above.
Now praise we for a hold man, St. Bernard of Clairvaux,
Sincere, unwearied, eloquent, stern saint of long ago:
Who triumphed o'er temptations with rigid self-command,
And laboured both for God and men, with soul and mind and hand.

21st.--23rd.

24th. St. Bartholomew. Collect, Epistle and Gospel. See printed hymn.

25th. St. Louis 1270. Add verse to hymn as above.
Recall we that religious king, St. Louis just and true,
Beloved in France for virtues and gifts possessed by few:
Who made himself respected an feared by foreign powers,
And lived a life in harmony with his most sacred hours.

26th.--27th.

28th. St. Augustine 430. Read--Longfellow's "Ladder of St. Augustine."

29th.--30th.

31st. John Bunyan died, 1688. Read--
"By this time the pilgrims had a desire to go forwards, and the shepherds a desire they should, so they walked together towards the end of the mountains. Then said the shepherds one to another, 'Let us here show the pilgrims the gate of the Celestial City, if they have skill to look through our perspective-glass.' The pilgrims then lovingly accepted the motion; so they had them to the top of a high hill called Clear, and gave them the glass to look."--The Pilgrim's Progress.

Typed by Sarah Delgado, Nov. 2024