There are childrens’ recitations at Christmas time in Rome in the church of Ara Coeli. A platform is erected in the nave; and every afternoon there is a crowd of children, and they go up, one by one, and recite their pieces with as much assurance as if they were accustomed to addressing public meetings every day. When listening to them, I have thought of May Day here and the overpowering shyness of the boys who have to make the little speech at the crowning of the Queen. I cannot remember more than one boy here who spoke as well as any of the children there; and he was so full of his speech that he put the crown on upside down, enveloping her eyes and nose in flowers that were intended to stand up above the rest. However, older people may do worse. Archbishop Temple was an octogenarian, and yet he all but put King Edward’s crown on with the hinder part in front.
The southern races have a greater gift of oratory than is customary here, and they seem to pass from childhood into manhood at a very much earlier age. John XII was only eighteen when he was elected Pope in 956, and four-and-twenty when he crowned Otho as Emperor; and at two-and-twenty he confirmed Saint Dunstan in the see of Canterbury and made him Papal Legate here, with what results we know. No doubt, a young man might become a Pope by influence or simony, but never an Heresiarch except on his own merits; and some of the great heretics were very young. Clement of Alexandria says in his _Stromateis_, III. 428, that Epiphanes the son of Carpocrates was only seventeen when he died: yet he had imperilled Christianity by his doctrine of Free Love. This young scamp of an Heresiarch was a contemporary of Antinoos; and it is one of the puzzles of ancient history why Christians or Pagans ever took such people seriously. But we must look at the paintings in the Catacombs rather than the writings of the Fathers, if we would understand the blithe life of the early Christians when Erôs was Patriarch of Antioch and Anterôs was Pope.
Leo X went into residence at Rome in 1492, being then a Cardinal and aged sixteen; and he had a letter from his father, Lorenzo de’ Medici, telling him how to behave there and above all things (una regola sopra l’altre) to get up early in the morning and set to work upon the business of the day. According to Domenichi, _Facetie_, p. 129, ed. 1581, Ugolino Martelli asked Lorenzo why he did not get up early himself, whereupon Lorenzo asked him what he did when he got up, and then told him that it was not worth while getting up to do such trivial things. That was an answer to Ugolino, but not an answer to the question that he asked, as Lorenzo certainly had weighty things to do; but it acknowledges that early rising is merely a means to an end, not an end in itself, as some fanatics say. In his _Duty and Advantages of Early Rising_ John Wesley says that (by the grace of God) he rose at four and had done so for sixty years, but he also says that he could not subsist with less than six hours and a half of sleep: so he must have gone to bed by half past nine. He does not show that it is any better to be awake at four or five in the morning than at ten or eleven at night; and in winter it certainly is worse, as vitality is at its lowest in the hours before dawn.