who investigate the subject. It lacks methodical arrangement, and that indispensable aid, an index; but this can be supplied in a second edition. We are glad to see that Mr. Spencer has republished it. Among us, the discussion of the new prison system has scarcely begun; but it is destined to become general, as we think. A synopsis of the Irish System was laid before the Massachusetts Legislature by Governor Andrew, in March last, included in the Special Report of the Board of Charities. We learn that the subject will be again brought forward the present winter, and an earnest effort made to secure the best features of the Irish method for the improvement of our own very defective prisons. In New York the Prison Association is preparing an elaborate Report on the Prisons of the United States, in which, it is expected, the need of a reform will be vigorously presented. In Pennsylvania, the ancient Society for the Alleviation of the Miseries of the Public Prisons has been exploring the horrors of the county jails, and setting forth the claims of humanity in that State. In Ohio a movement of reform has begun ; in St. Louis, Dr. Eliot, in a spirited pamphlet, has shown the shameful condition of the prisons there; and, everywhere, the rapidly organizing Associations for promoting Social Science are taking up, among other matters, the subject of prison discipline. It behooves every philanthropist, therefore, to give some attention to a question which has been too long neglected. Now that our prisons are filling up at an enormous rate of increase, and drawing into their fatal contamination thousands of returned soldiers and neglected children, it is the duty of every community to take serious thought for the welfare of these persons, remembering how and by whom it was said, "Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." ART. IX. 1. Oliver Optic's Army and Navy Stories. Bos - ton: Lee and Shepard. 1865. 2. Oliver Optic's Boat-Club Series. Boston: Lee and Shepard. 1865. 6 vols. 3. The Little Prudy Stories. By SOPHIE MAY. Boston: Lee and Shepard. 1865. 6 vols. 4. Golden-Haired Gertrude, a Story for Children. By THEODORE TILTON. New York: Tibbals and Whiting. 1865. 5. The Two Hungry Kittens. By THEODORE TILTON. New York: Tibbals and Whiting. 1866. 6. John Gay, or Work for Boys. By JACOB ABBOTT. New York: Hurd and Houghton. 1865. 4 vols. 7. The House that Jack built, from Original Designs by H. L. STEPHENS. New York: Hurd and Houghton. 1866. 8. Old Mother Hubbard and her Dog, from Original Designs by H. L. STEPHENS. New York: Hurd and Houghton. 1866. 9. The Story of Red Riding-Hood, told in Verse. By R. H. STODDARD. New York: Hurd and Houghton. 1866. 10. My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field. By CARLETON. Third Edition. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1865. 11. Following the Flag. By CARLETON. and Fields. 1865. Boston Ticknor 12. The Seven Little Sisters, who live on the Round Ball that floats in the Air. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1865. 13. The Flower People. By MARY MANN. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1865. 14. The Bushrangers, a Yankee's Adventures during his Second Visit to Australia. Boston: Lee and Shepard. 1865. 15. The Cruise of the Frolic. By W. H. G. KINGSTON. BOSton: J. E. Tilton & Co. 1865. 16. The Drummer Boy. By J. T. TROWBRIDGE. Boston: J. E. Tilton & Co. 1865. 17. Dora Darling, the Daughter of the Regiment. Boston: J. E. Tilton & Co. 1865. 18. Paul Prescott's Charge, a Story for Boys. By HORATIO ALGER, JR. Boston: Loring. 1865. 19. Cousin Kate. By the Author of the Heir of Redclyffe. Boston: Loring. 1865. 20. The Little Gentleman in Green, a Fairy Tale. By UNA SAVIN. Boston: Loring. 1865. 21. Stories of the Woods, or Adventures of Leatherstocking. By JAMES F. COOPER. New York: J. G. Gregory. 1865. 22. Paul and Virginia. Rasselas. Elizabeth of Siberia. Undine. Sintram. New York: James Miller. 1865. MOTHER GOOSE and Miss Edgeworth are the two opposite poles between which the whole world of juvenile literature hangs suspended. A child is as much injured by being debarred his proper rations of fancy as of fact, of fact as of fancy. Always floating in delicious equipoise, he can neither be made exclusively real nor altogether ideal. If he found a fairy every morning in his bread and milk, it would not seriously surprise him; and, on the other hand, Jonas in the barn-chamber is to him a vision almost as fascinating as Jack on the bean-stalk. He asks to know if the wildest German legend be true, but Harry and Lucy are not true enough to be prosaic; they also dwell in a dream-land of their own, laid out into laboratories instead of fairy wings, and lit with fire-balloons instead of willo'-the-wisps. The romantic mamma, who regards with dismay the disenchanting footsteps of Rollo in Europe, is entitled to no more consideration than the grim professor who impeaches Gammer Grethel. Grown people have their prejudices and limitations, but children have none. In their scales, a pound of lead and a pound of feathers weigh always the same. And it is as easy to reach the hearts of children as their imaginations or their perceptions. True, they will swallow unmoved the most substantial tragedies, as a dog bolts his morsel, looking up for more. Yet presently a stray word fascinates them, the cadence of a sentence, the charm of an illusion, — and there is woven a spell of tenderness which lasts for a lifetime. Many a sturdy boy has a veritable Charles Auchester within him, ready to be drowned in the last depths of pathos by the magic of a tone. The early associations of every one are moist with the most inexplicable and preposterous tears. Probably Caroline Fry's "Listener" would now be held as rather a stern and prosaic book to be administered to the young; yet there is one passage in it, in some beggar story, about never more beholding Margaret Somebody and her sunburnt child, that would doubtless set this present writer crying like Mrs. Nickleby, on reperusal, though the work has not been visibly beheld since the susceptible age of ten. Then there was Roxabel," by Mrs. Sherwood, whose highly evangelical pathos still retains its wondrous charm, and has been more recently tested. The very name of some sweet sorrow beguiles these little sentimentalists, ere yet they have tasted of the thing. We have known a vigorous boy of twelve to lie awake for hours by night bathing his pillow with tears for the fate of poor Undine, and refusing to be comforted except by an ingenious imaginary conclusion, bringing back the unfortunate to earth and matrimony again, and conducting her on to a calm old ageand a great many grandchildren. With this permanence of fascination, one wonders that any new children's books should be needed. Yet while Robinson Crusoe and his peers still survive immortal, it is pathetic to reflect what argosies of fancy and of fact have gone down into the abyss of "out of print," within easy memory. Whither is departed that boyish literature so precious, that once throve in the shelter of school-desks, and under safe coverts of benches? It was a literature in itself innocent of moral guilt, unless, perhaps, enormous lying be held an offence, which yet possessed in its use, by reason of surreptitiousnes, much of the sweet savor of sin. Baron Trenck was there, with his imminent deadly breaches,-Rinaldo Rinaldini, the Three Spaniards, and the Scottish Chiefs,-four nations sifted to find sufficient heroes of romance for us. These books were cautiously transmitted from hand to hand, in little, thin, dingy volumes, suitable to the pockets of youth, in editions which each boy secretly supposed to have been printed, like the classics, "for the use of schools." Nobody knew whence they came, nobody had ever bought them, nobody owned them, everybody borrowed them. Among the older boys there lurked a tradition that certain boys still older had left them behind on going to college,— bequeathed them to their younger brothers, still in bonds. The same mystery, or deeper, yet hangs over them. You cannot now find these books at the bookstores; or, if perchance you discover them, they are in good editions, and not worth pur chasing. Sometimes one has a delicious glimpse of them, or of volumes that look like them, far in the country, in a pedler's pack, or among the outlying booths at a cattle-show. One finds election-buus at just such places, but neither bun nor book has precisely the flavor that it once possessed. see Another book, whose permanent disappearance seems now inexplicable, was "The Amusements of Westernheath." That book was our Comedy of Errors, our Artemus Ward, our ing Warren." That was, by some singular chance, a Sundayschool library book, and it revolved through that calm solar system with such unprecedented rapidity that it frequently flew from its orbit, and was lost; and there were long intervals of darkness, when we inquired for it and it was not there. Perhaps the teachers demurred, before replacing it, whether it might not be too delightful to be strictly religious. Yet this uncertainty of reappearance increased the thrill of every perusal, and the satiated little reader reverted to the common fare of Miss Hannah More's "Coelebs," as one who has dreamed a dream, and is tremblingly uncertain whether the vision will ever reappear. For more direct insight into fairy-land, there was that plump and delicious little quarto, "The Child's Own Book," - not "The Boy's Own Book," which pertained to out-door sports, nor "The Girl's Own Book," which treated of in-door games, but liberally and comprehensively "The Child's Own Book." Here were to be found Riquet with the Tuft, and Graciosa and Percinet, and the White Cat, and all the rest. These were inexhaustible; while, to furnish a bridge on which to creep back somewhere near to reality, Philip Quarll had an abiding-place, for self and goats, in the same encyclopedic volume, that none might be without a desolate island or so, as steppingstones in the return-trip from those enchanted worlds. To childhood thus fortified on the romantic side came common-sense in due time, in the garb of Maria Edgeworth, followed at fit distance by Harriet Martineau. These also, to healthy omnivorous young creatures, brought their own delights, which were also permanent. The little we now know of business matters is mainly based on sound views of the currency imbibed from Berkley the Banker before the age of |