of every age, seeing that the cultivation of his race is surely the most important work in which man can be engaged. It is professedly the great question of these times; yet, amid much useful discussion of school arrangements, and the methods of teaching, some of the less obvious aspects of the process of change, which is everywhere and incessantly going on in human minds, are, it seems, too much neglected. And the books by which they are amnsed and spontaneously educated are surely among the most powerful domestic influences to which children are exposed. The department of literature has worthily engaged writers of the highest intellect, who have known childhood well, and the habits and tastes of successive generations are formed by the fruit of their labors.

Before attempting to answer the question,-What sort of writing is best adapted for the young? another question accordingly must be entertained, What are their tastes and capacities? The warm and affectionate susceptibility of children, their noble aspirations, their confiding trust in others, and unselfish admiration of whatever is beautiful and good,-traits like these, with the counterpoise of such defects as restlessness,, imprudence, appetency of pleasure and impatience of pain or restraint, are manifest at a glance. But there are phenomena less obtrusive, some of which, at first sight, appear reconcilable one with another. These ought to be considered; for though from causes already alluded to, from the want of sympathy between old and young, and from the assidious assiduity with which the cares of the man imperceptibly obliterate the very different experiences of the child, it is difficult to understand thoroughly the hidden things of childhood, so as to see their unity and relation to each other as parts of a mysterious whole, yet something may be gathered. Some few scattered fragments, a frieze here, a broken capital there, may serve to remind us how fair and how wonderful the ruin must have been, while it stood a living temple.

One of the chief points of difference between boyhood and girlhood,and it is to the life of boys that our following remarks chiefly refer,is, that the bov is not merely, or chiefly, passing through a state of transition. With the other sex it is for the most part different. With them, from the moment of emerging from the nursery to the auspicious epoch of "coming out," too often is a dreary blank. There is no cricket, no football, nor one of the many avocations of a boy's little world to enliven it. Hence so often in young ladies an insipid and artificial tone, totally different from the independence and unworldly spirit of a boy, especially at a public school. He lives in a world of his own, very complete and satisfying while it lasts. However alluring may be the opening vista of "real life," and however eager he may be to anticipate the dignity of manhood, still there is very much to prize and enjoy in the present on its own account,-very much that he must relinquish on assuming the "toga virilis." It was a serious mistake ir the artist to represent the sons of Laocoon in the finished proportion of little men, not with the wavy outlines of youth. It would be a similar error in any system of education, and it is one of frequent occurrence now in books written for the young, to regard them merely as men on a small scale, and not as they are, denizens of another world. The man, matured in years, pressing onwards to some mark-power, it may be, or money-or, at all events, aware of the grave that expects him, cannot fail to note anxiously the progress of each day. He is, as it were, borne along on a downward stream, whose waters flow more and more swiftly as they approach the sea. Meanwhile, the child is floating hither and thither on a sunlit ocean, wrapt in the unconscious security of an eternal now. This completeness or to borrow an expressive word from a foreign tongue, this "entelechy" of boyhood, results in part from the rich variety of aspects which that age presents internally. Coleridge, the poct-philosopher, says that there has never been a really great man, without a considerable admixture of the feminine-not the effeminate-element in his character. The combination of courage and modesty, of impetuosity and gentleness, of the component parts, according to the Eastern apologue, of the lion and the dove, is particularly noticeable in boys. But we must proceed to collect in detail a few of their most remarkable characteristics.

One of these is what may be most shortly expressed by a word that has come unluckily to savour rather of philosophic pedantry,-their objectivity. It may be true scientifically that the quality of colour, the green, for instance, of a tree or meadow, resides in the mind rather than in the natural object itself; but the opposite belief is more pleasant, and is one source of the vivid enjoyment which children feel in every thing proposed to the senses. They cling to what is concrete and outward. To them every person, nay, every brute creature, every inanimate object. that seizes their attention becomes an independent and individual object. The image stan is within the mind in bold relief, at if it were a living thing, in causeless and self-essential individuality; for as yet there is no habit of causation, no "ætiatic" habit, as it has been called, but an unhesitating and uncritical acceptance of every thing presented. Particulars are as yet in no danger of evanescing into abstractions. They are scarcely numerous enough to require digestion and arrangement into classes. Each one holds its place by its own right in the memory, a real, actual, concrete quasi-person.

And as the memory is then most impressible, so is it also most retentive then without much aid from casuality or logical relation. The fact, and the fact alone, is enough. Even a name, a proper name, is draped with form and colour by the lavish exuberance of the imagination, and seems to assert its own indefeasible fitness. Dry rules, formal and unmeaning as they seem, scarcely cost an effort to be remembered, though the principle of them, the "wherefore" of their operation, remain unexplained. From this objectivity comes a child s love of initation, not only of imitating what is attractive, but of imitating every thing for imitation's sake; his aptness for mimicry and everything in the way of acting; the entire belief with which, either as spectator, or himself the tiny actor, he loses his own identity in that of the person represented. Hence, too, the fondness for pictures, not from any conscious appreciation of the imitator's ingenuity, but because the picture to them becomes for the moment the very person, or place, or incident represented.

Closely connected with the same principle of objectivity, is the unconscious pleasure that children imbibe from the beauties of nature. Their enjoyment of Nature is something inexpressible, the more rapturous, that it is unconscious, and undisturbed by any abstract speculations about the beautiful or the picturesque. Like the ancient Greeks, they seem aware of the pervading tone, whatever it may be, of the landscape, of the delicious languors of summer, or the bright crispness of a frosty winter's day. The details, too, they perceive singly and separately; but like the Grecks, they seem to be devoid of that analytic sense of the composition of the various features of the scene, which is so prominent a feature in modern descriptive poetry, especially in that of the Lake school.

How very early in life an unconscious sense of poetry begins to manifest itself, is obvious to all who are conversant with the sayings and doings of children; and close observers know well how rich a treasure of real poetical material lies formless and unnoticed in the depths of a child's heart. A few years pass on, and the tendency be gins to show itself in overt acts. In the pages of a school magazine, however trashy and ambitious the prose may be, the poetry is often really beautiful. But the poetry that approves itself to the ears of youth is seldom of a complex kind. Deep it may be-indeed it can scarcely be too deep-provided only it be simple. The taste for melody comes before that of harmony. For this reason Shakspeare is seldom a favorite with boys; unless it be for the interest of his story. His exuberant and many-sided imagination continually leads him, as it were, into intricate and complicated "fugues,"-true to life and nature, he blends into one rich harmony the most apparently discordant tones; and it is this Variety in Unity that especially marks his universal genius. But boys prefer the passionate and flowing strains of poets like Byron, Moore, and Scott. Even Milton, for this reason, finds more admirers at an early age than Shakspeare.

It is quite true that boys, especially schoolboys, have a very lively sense of what is ridiculous, and still more of what is ludicrous. No soubriquets elaborated in after life by the ingenuity of party warfare, hit the mark so well as those at school,-launched by the careless hand and forged in an instant by the ready wit and happy versatility of boys. But notwithstanding all this playful humour, the other element preponderates below the surface. Thus Dickens is generally a greater favorite with boys than Thackeray.

One more aspect-a very important one-of this objectivity remains to be noticed, as it affects the religious state of children. Belief in them is not what Mr. Carlyle reprobates as a "sham" belief; it is not a belief that they believe. As far as it goes, it is very real indeed. But the child's idea of a future state is rather a continuation of the happy home in which he lives, than a new heaven and a new earth. He cannot conceive it otherwise, and why should he? Perhaps this consideration tends to explain, what has been called*, in one of the little books for boys, "an inscrutable mystery in boyhood;" the rapid facility with which the sorrows of repentance are effaced by returning lightness of heart.

Another characteristic of the young-one which they have in common with the fair sex-is the personal aspect in which they regard things; the disposition to refer everything to the person from whom it proceeds, or to whom it belongs, and to judge of it accordingly. Principles and opinions are invested by them with the associations belonging to the persons who support or impugn them. The personal authority of the teacher, his claims to affection or respect, have more efficacy with them than the independent evidence of what he inculcates. Nor

* The passage is so beautiful, that we cannot refrain from quoting it entire:"Truly it is a mystery, that strange privilege which boyhood alone seems to possess of being at once sinful and light-hearted. It is, as it were, the mingling of the pure and the impure in the same cnp, without the whole draught becoming polluted. In after years guilt has its moments of wild and feverish delight; but boys, and boys alone, can sin and be sorry for a while, and then fling aside all thought of it, and feel as though they had never sinned at all. In infancy the consciousness of sin is a thing unknown, in manhood it presses on the heart like an ever-present burden; but in boyhood it is like an April cloud, which flits over the landscape, darkening it for a while, and then passing away altogether, and leaving it as bright as ever. Of all the mysteries of boyhood this is perhaps the most inscrutable.”—Charlton School, or the Cherry Stones.

can it be regretted, that their reason, immature at present and ill prepared to enter into the strife of opinions, should be naturally disposed to attach itself to the guides, placed within reach by Providence, and to submit to them almost implicitly.

Again children have a quick and intuitive sense of character. They are skilful to read its hieroglyphics in the look, voice, manner, and general appearance. They feel themselves unaccountably attracted or repelled by the different persons with whom they are brought into contact; and these prepossessions seldom prove mistaken. They are great hero worshippers. Virtue to them is no lifeless abstraction-no "bona res"-nor yet a frigid and decorous personification. To find a way into their hearts, she must appear like the gods of Homer,-in the real flesh and blood of some great and good man. As soon as they begin to be initiated into the busy controversies of the political world, they become violent partisans. With the party to which they are attached, resides all right and goodness: out of its pale all are aliens and foes. Castles in the air, beautiful and unsubstantial, "rise like an exhalation;" or "like the airy fabric of a dream," doomed, alas, "to melt away before the light of common day." Cherished theories of Utopian perfection, and the eager pursuit of unattainable ends, lure on the willing dupe; until, as years pass away, tired of the hopeless chase, he learns to understand that to strive after good, rather than to attain it, is the portion allotted to man by God in this life.

It may be added that children are little, if at all, affected by worldly considerations in choosing their friends. Rank and riches are nothing to them, in comparison with real personal attractions. Tufthunting, or "flunkeyism," as it is now called, too often the bane of society, among the grown up children of the world, is almost, if not utterly, unknown at school Prowess at cricket or football-feats of bodily strength and activity-deeds of "pluck" and hardihood-the val ue o qualifications like these may be overrated at school; but, after all, the higher excellencies of generosity, kindliness and candour, never fail o be appreciated there. The self aggrandizing spirit, which torments men in after years with a constant anxiety to form "good connexions," is powerless to infuse its base alloy into the genuine affection of early friendship. Very heedless of consequences they often are-and scarcely familiar enough with pain and suffering by their own experience to estimate rightly what they are inflicting; but they must be acquitted of any thing like intentional or deliberate cruelty. Their "love of mischief" is in the main an experimentalizing curiosity. Another accusation, brought against them-it occurs in a book full of thoughtful advice on the subject of education, "Early Influences," by Mrs. Montgomeryis, that they are not naturally truthful. It might have been supposed that, if anywhere, truth would delight to dwell in so pure an abode as the breast of little children. It would be difficult to connect the idea of falsity with their artless simplicity. The fact is, they have a strong innate sense of the badness of a lie: but the timidity and shrinking from pain inseparable from a tender age, easily avail to overpower the natural propensity to truth. Thus an appearance of insincerity is produced. A similar explanation might be applied to the national character of the Italians and Hindoos. Reserved, except to the few who understand them, children are very liable to sudden gusts of changefulness, but they are not often deceitful nor untrue.

The peculiarities of the mysterious stage of human life which we have been contemplating thus show that it is almost impossible to overrate the importance of children's books. So subtle and imperceptible is the influence of external circumstances on the inner life--so mysteriously are the links in the chain of progression inter dependent that scarcely the autobiographer himself can say positively how far the colour of his whole life betrays the dye first imparted to it in the incidental associations of childhood, and ever afterwards retained. But the coral bed is day by day acquiring bulk and coherence, while the waters pass idly to and fro above the invisible workmen of the deep. What now appears so insignificant will one day rise solid and compact above the surface;-perchance a gallant vessel shall founder there; perchance it shall become a very fertile land. So it is with the hidden growth of character. Nature supplies the raw material-the innate taste and capacity. This or that book, accidentally encountered perhaps, and devoured with the keenness of a youthful appetite, serves to kindle the slumbering energies with a Promethean spark. The gallant sailor may receive the first in pulse that launches him on his perilous and glorious career from the fabled adventures of Crusoe, or the graphic narratives of Anson and Drake and Byron, which he read when a boy. The young imagination of another has feasted over the tales of Bagdad and Balsora, on luscious descriptions of the treasures of the East, or mused on the daring and successful enterprise of merchant princes in the Indies, and the result has been a life of commercial speculation. In a third the seeds of military glory have been sown by reading of Knight or Paladin, and in due time they have borne fruit. Sir Walter Scott is an instance. The tales and legends that pleased his childish fancy, though thrust aside for a time by less palatable occupations, never lost their charm, but remained with him to the last. The greatest events of history, the fate of dynasties and nations, the master

works of art, the grandest discoveries that have signalized the march of mankind on the highroad of civilization, might thus be found to issue from some "child's book."

And yet it is often deemed an easy and trivial thing to write for children. Books about children it is comparatively easy to write: but it is not so easy to penetrate the secret of youthful sympathies, to captivate them and hold them fast. It is not for every harper, says the Welsh proverb, to play upon the harp of many strings. As it is, while "books for children" are innumerable, the number of really good works of this sort-skilfully adapted to meet the wants of their happy thoughtless life, is small indeed. Childhood to many persons is a sealed book, and remains so always.

It follows from what has been already said on the characteristics of children, that it is a great mistake to take pains to write down to the supposed level of their capacities. The fact is, that most children, if not all, are very fond of pondering with themselves the deepest and most awful subjects. The guesses of intuition not unfrequently hit the truth, just as a woman is generally right until she begins to give her reasons. So it is often with children. The wonders of the natural world-of earth and sea and sky-nay, even the mysterious questions,* which all the acquired knowledge of manhood is incompetent to answer satisfactorily, of fate, freewill, sin, happiness, eternity; infinite and perplexing questions of this kind

Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized

have a strange fascination for children. We do not mean to say that it is well to indulge the proneness towards such speculations unreserv edly. But the mere fact that children find pleasure in them, shews an extent of rational curiosity and sympathy larger than is usually imputed to their age. Those who have forgotten their own childhood, and who do not care to study the ways of boys, do not know what profound aspirations are often at work within their little heads. In and inexperienced as that of a child, first essayed to construct a system the infancy of Greek philosophy, when the Ionian mind, inquisitive of the universe, it plunged into every department of philosophy, material, moral, metaphysical, at once, and mingled all together in a grotesque theological confusion. A similar process is often going on in children. There is scarcely any height or depth in thought out of the reach of their curious inquiries. In experience and method, of course they are deficient. But the reason, as distinguished by Kant and Coleridge from the understanding, already asserts its unity with that of the great human family.

in good taste or bad. They have a great deal of reverence and reChildren are generally very good judges whether a book is written serve, aad a wondering admiration of everything remarkable. As soon as it is laid bare by a thorough explanation and stripped of all its mystery, it loses interest for them. Perpetual explanations are not only unnecessary for them, but wearisome and distasteful. They gain more real and lasting instruction from partial glimpses,-half revealing, half suggesting, gradually leading onwards to truth in its fulness, not exposing it all at once, supplying the mind meanwhile with abundant food for meditation, than by the uninviting glare of a complete

illumination.

It is a drawback from the great merit of the late Mrs. Sherwood's style of writing for children, that she too much seeks to lower things to the supposed tenuity of their understandings, by way of making everything plain and easy for them. But they do not love so meagre a diet for their imagination and dawning reason. The Athenian philosopher, of whom it has been truly said that he taught the world as one would a little child, well knew the magnetic power that resides in a teaching suggestive rather than exhaustive, in which truth is implied rather than expressed. A proverb in use among his own countrymen who told him that "half is more than the whole." And if we look for guidance to the highest example of instruction-one greater and holier far than Socrates or any human teacher-we cannot fail to observe how content he was that his words should remain only understood in part for a while, until the growing capacity of his hearers should enlarge itself to the measure of their full significancy.

We have already remarke 1 that children are naturally disposed to receive undisputingly the teaching which proceeds from what they regard as good authority. The tone of assertion, the unhesitating tone of strong belief, has more weight with them than the most ingenious argumentative discussion. It seems intended by nature that it should be so; and for obvious reasons. Now, this habit of mind evidently requires dogmatic rather than controversial writing. But after all, we must add, that some of these books by Mrs. Sherwood are among the most popular of books for children. They are too well known to require any particular description. The most pleasant early associa

cary gather rouge Fairchild Family. The happy and thosen by Li phish bene there revealed the quict pictures of rural Engish sechery and of the pleasant town of beading--the evenings in the Primrose Meadow, and the stories of Mrs. Loward and little Marten, and the fair Henrie, who was trained to love God among the valleys of the Waldenses, and full of genial goodness and active fancy. The last fault alleged again-t Mr. Sherwood also attaches to the well-known and beautifully-written tales by the authoress of Amy Herbert. Of all the graceful stories from the pen of this lady, Amy Herbert appears to have the most admirers. Nor is it strange that so amiable a picture of childhood should make itself a favourite with all who take any pleasure in the contemplation of youth and innocence. Its truthfulness also, in the delineation of childish character imparts to it the charm of reality; not truthfulness merely of general outlines, but a close fidelity to nature in the nicer details of word and manner. But Amy Herbert fails to realize the beau ideal of a child's book. It offers a delightful employment for leisure time for older persons; full of interesting and instructive hints on the best way of training the unformed character, of pruning its evil tendencies, and of fostering into ripe maturity its budding traits of goodness; but in youthful hands there would be cause for apprehension, lest it should encourage a precocious and unhealthy spirit of self consciousness.

The principle of addressing the faculty of reasoning, as yet very imperfectly developed in children, to the undue neglect of their affections and imagination, is an offence of frequent occurrence, and apt to obtrude itself even into works of considerable merit.

From reasons already stated, it may be inferred, that an indirect mode of teaching is to be preferred for children-we mean the embodiment of abstract truth into narrative. Such a mode of writing wins its way more easily into the understanding-quickens the attention inspires the feeling—is retained more lastingly-gives more exercise to the imagination. Nature significantly points in this direction, by the eager appetite for pictures and stories which she has implanted in children. In reading Esop's Fables children often omit the "moral." But it does not follow, therefore, that they lose the point of the story. Their sympathies are enlisted on the right side; and the readiness of childhood to identify itself with the personages in the story seldom fails to make the suitable application. The lesson conveyed penetrates deeper into their nature by being received thus unconsciously; it becomes an integral part of their character by absorption-it acts more efficaciously than it would, if administered like a dose of medicine, a dry sermon after an entertaining narrative. The quiet and gradual operation of air, and diet, and exercise, is always preferable to artificial remedies. In the way of exercise, it is well known that the alternate tension and relaxation of the various muscles in a game-cricket for example, or tennis-while the mind is too much engaged in the amusement to be conscious of the exercise, is more conducive to health than a periodical walk taken deliberately for health's sake. The analogy is obvious. Ballad poetry is invariably the kind of poetry that commends itself to the infancy and youth of a people; it appeals to their senses; it supplies them with living realities, not impossible ideas; it ministers to their desire of adventure and romance. Example is better than precept, especially for children. Besides the advantages to which we have alluded, as attendant to such a mode of teaching, it must be allowed, even by the sternest utilitarian, to be no small gain—in a world so full of inevitable unhappiness-to substitute what is pleasurable for a comparatively painful process; especially in the treatment of that part of human life which seems intended by God to be a season of enjoyment while it lasts, whatever troubles may be awaiting its

mature manhood.

The allegorical style has not been altogether neglected even in this utilitarian land. In the sense of unpoetic, the propriety of the epithet has been disproved by facts. Practical and inexcitable the English undoubtedly are; less capable of perceiving ideal principles than their German cousins; slower sensibility than their susceptible neighbours in France: but the best poetry is the offspring of strong and profound, not transitory passion, and speaks in the language of the senses rather than in philosophic generalizations. Accordingly there has been a goodly growth of poetry, especially of a dramatic character, both in the Northern and Southern divisions of the island. Even the allegorical vein-if less bountiful of its treasure here than in Germany, less wildly or fancifully picturesque, less spiritual, more broad and homely-has not proved altogether unproductive in England. John Bunyan is a very old instance. Many generations have experienced the influence of his vivid descriptions, couched in racy and genuine language. It would be the sign of an evil day, if ever the marvellous dreamings of the self-taught genius of Elstow should be laid on the shelf by common consent as an antiquarian curiosity. Inspired by earnest convictions and an intense devotion, they penetrate the heart; they bring a mes sage of life and death; and they will be heard with sympathetic interest by distant generations. As a work for children, indeed, the Pilgrim's Progress is not faultless. The meaning of the allegory is sometimes too thinly veiled, and forces itself so prominently forward as to interfere with the appearance of reality in the story.

Persons of every religious school-evon such as disapprove of the ecclesiastical tendency of Mr. Adam's Tales-must agree that few recent works are more admirable than his Distant Hills, and other allegories,--viewed as beautiful works of art, adapted for the childmind The gentle and persuasive tone of such indirect exhortation to holiness, finds an entrance into every heart. The quiet and peaceful, yet not gloomy stillness which pervades his stories; and the lovely images summoned before the eye, transport the reader for a time out of the ceaseless turmoil of this vicious and anxious world; and soothe him with happy thoughts of a better state. Agathos, and other stories by Bishop Wilberforce, are well-known and beautiful specimens of this class. The Four Seasons has been for some time before the Engilsh readers in a translation. Undine-the exquisitely fantastic Undine-is quite naturalized in the public favour. Sintram, another of the "four seasons," is strikingly beautiful in a different way; it claims kindred with "howling winter." Aslanza's Knight is perhaps the best after “Sin. tram," as an allegory. It represents the triumph of a pure and valiant faith, constant through many trials over the temptations of the things that are seen. A delicate tinge of symbolic meaning may be detected in all the tales of this author, by those who take the trouble to look for it. But, even without a distinct perception of this, his noble spir of chivalrous heroism and spotless purity, sans peur et sans reproch cannot but exercise an influence for good, however unconsciously, o the character of the reader. Tales, like his, are most in unison wit the imaginative temperament of youth, and most likely to encourag e its high and generous aspirations.

Hans Andersen, with his Danish legends, is inimitable in his quaint and grotesque way, especially in tales like The Ugly Ducklitg. As regards our own island, it must be confessed in passing, that almost all the standard books for children have come from the south side of the Tweed. But if Scotland has not produced much literature peculiarly intended and fitted for the young, at least she has given birth to her favourite poet; who revels in the legendary lore of his romantic fatherland with an enjoyment like their own; and whose vivid imagination makes history attractive and easily remembered, even for the least studious amongst them. The Tales of a Grandfather is a model of historic narrative for boys.

Charlton School, or the Cherry Stones has been already mentioned. It is a very good sample of a different kind of story from most of those last referred to. school. The description of the ways of boys which it contains is so It is not always allegorical. The scene of it is a

true to nature-it is so full of a genial appreciation of their bright an 1 engaging qualities—that it must be pronounced one of the best books for children in that kind. Hope on, Hope ever! by Mrs. Howitt, is a remarkable story, with a good moral. Ministering Children contains some beautiful passages, and illustrates in how many ways children may be happy in doing good. But we have already expressed our own the actors are farther removed from the position of the reader, as less preference for allegorical stories-or, at all events, for stories in which likely to promote an undue self-consciousness in children. Whatever difference of opinion may exist on this point, however, one rule may safely be affirmed, applicable alike to all instruction, direct or suggestive, literal or metaphorical. And this is, that it should be of a positive and not of a negative character. It should dwell rather on the attractions of what is right, than on the deformity of what is wrong; it should aim at developing the good tendencies, not solely or principally at checking and eradicating the bad. For the mind assimilates itself to what it cor templates, in the same way as one human face acquires the expression of another most familiar to it. It has been noticed in the most successful preachers, that they seldom conclude a discourse with thoughts of sin and sorrow. The former part of the sermon may have abounded with the most harrowing revelations of sin and threatenings of judgment, but the last words dispense consolation, and heal the wounds, and leave the blessing of mercy and forgiveness.

"Brother, let thy sorrows ceaseSinful sister, part in peace!"

And so it should be for all; most especially for the young. In this respect, as in others that have been mentioned, the taste of those that write for them, or otherwise instruct them, would be much lightened, it would be half done to hand if they would work with Nature, and use her kindly aid; if they would build on the foundations that she has laid; if they would incite, invite, encourage, rather than deter and restrain. Good and evil cannot exist together. The surest way, as well as the pleasantest, is to prevent the latter by the former. Once lost, the blissful inexperience of evil cannot be regained. Like the bloom of a rose or the down of a peach, it perishes if rudely handled. Some retain it longer. Happy the few who never forfeit it entirely! For it does not imply any unfitness to meet the dangers of active lifeit does not require the retirement of the cloister. There is in goodness an instinctive abhorence of moral evil, a sense of its insidious approaches in the most guileless heart, which is the best shield against temptation. Evil is so ubiquitous, that there is only too great a facility for ob

t

serving it. Why should we anticipate the evil day, provoke an unequal conflict, before the strength of the reason is matured, destroy before we are compelled, the defence erected by Nature, the defence of innocence? Dr. Arnold's "Sermons," admirable as they are for earnest piety, plainness of speech, and searching insight into character, are not free from this blemish. It is scarcely necessary, after what has been already said, to add, that books of mere amusement, without any pretensions at all to instruction, are not by any means to be left out of the list of children's books. The most ludicrous or impossible tale that ever ran riot among the marvels of Fairy-land, or the braggadocios of Munchausen,-a farce to older readers, would require a law-maker more cruel than Draco to attempt to banish them. If older heads are not proof against the fas cination of such stories, if it refreshes them to stroll among the bazaars of Bagdad, along the sunny banks of the Tigris, under a canopy of plam trees, with lamps like the stars of heaven glittering amid their dusky foliage,-"in the golden time of good Haroun Alraschid," or to engage in the wars of the Genii, to battle with radiant powers of good against the wiles and machinations of dark rebellious spirits, or in a less arduous flight of fancy, to pace the silent shore, with its solitary inhabitant, the shipwrecked mariner, in all the majesty of independence, all the sadness of utter isolation, and with him to learn the strange joy of conquering necessity by invention,-if older readers find a pleasure in such things, and many do, much more are they the legitimate property of youth. The capacity of believing them thoroughly for the time, is one of the most luscious enjoyments vouchsafed by Nature to the young. Who would wish to wrest it from them, or dare to deny its usefulness? It is a truism to speak of "the bow that is never unbent," or of the evil consequences from "all work and no play." Immoderate carefulness,-ever toiling after some remote end, never pausing to enjoy the flower that blooms, by the mercy of Heaven, along the wayside, making a business even of pleasure, seldom, if ever, relaxing into the genial and graceful abandon of a southern clime, is confessedly a fault of the Anglo-Saxon character, and one bane of unhappiness in Britain at this time. Not the least deplorable result of this propensity, not the least mischievous among the causes that encourage it are the dry compendia of "Useful Knowledge" which find favour in certain quarters; by gratifying a shortsighted importance for speedy and shewy results-a shopkeeper's preference for small profits and quick returns. It is scarcely worth while, for the sake of a superficial mattering, to dwarf the imagination, disgust the natural appetite for knowledge, foster a complacent irreverence, dazzled by the parade of its own apparent proficiency, and substitute an artificial unprogressive precocity for the generous growth of time. There has been much of late years to expose the fallacy. We have seen paper constitutions survived by those who made them; and we may learn, that in the discipline of individuals, as of nations, the shortest way is not always the safest. The flowers, without sap or root, which a child culls, and sticks in the soil, to wither before nightfall; the dry bones, which iay withered and scattered on the plain of Chebar; the puppets on the stage which move their arms and legs with all the regularity of real life, are not more different from living flowers, living bodies, living men and women, than a mechanical aggregation of facts and figures is from reat instruction. Mere empiricism is not true wisdom.

"Wouldst thou plant for eternity," says Carlyle, "then plant into the deep faculties of man, his fantasy and his heart; wouldst thou plant for year and day, then plant into his shallow faculties, his selflove and arithme ical understanding." And again,-"Soul must catch fire through a mysterious contact with living soul. Mind grows not, like a vegetable, by having its roots littered with etymological compost, but like a spirit by mysterious contact with spirit; thought kindles itself at the fire of living thought." "Useful information," however concealed under the thin and undignified disguise of "Philosophy in Sport," is not real education; perhaps it is most objectionable in its serio-comic form; it is "neither fish nor flesh, nor good red herring." Even in the hands of clever and agreeable writers like Miss Edgeworth or Miss Martineau, its wheels drag heavily. The greatest and best men have usually been the most thoroughly boys in their time. The ingenious substitute of what are cailed, in schools for young ladies, by name of "calisthenic exercises," is but a miserable make-shift for the healthy excitement of a game, as "scientific dialogues" and "epitomes of history" are for the free and complete development of the whole being through the agency of works which address the imagination and the feelings, and thus prepare for the higher developments of

reason.

Such old established favourites as the Arabian Nights need no apology at our hands, but, in connexion with the characteristics which we have been considering, it is obvious to remark that they hold their, place among children's books, and in the affections of their readers, by no blind force of habit or merely unreasonable devotion. The very land of their birth, the nursery of the human race, is rich in associa tions akin to those of childhood, and the literature of that land is naturally such as to find an echo in every childish bosom. The faculty so strong in children, of simple wonder and awful curiosity, as yet un

chilled by the cold breath of criticism, and the habit of self-conscious reflection,-which may enervate more than it enlightens, is pleased only, not cloyed, by those fantastic yet familiar tales that enrich the empty but capacious mind of the child with many a gorgeous scene and moving incident, both of a natural and supernatural kind. Regarded as mere amusement, such tales are probable-but this is not all. Though there be no moral formally appended to the fable, and administered, as it were, to efface its impression and dispel its meaning, yet perhaps, even in moral influence, Arabian Night and Fairy Tale may not be altogether wanting. There at least vice and virtue are not approximated by the disclosure of their secret workings, and of that almost invisible point from which they begin to diverge. There is no mistake about the Ogre and the Evil Genius-they are indisputably bad and detestable: evil is left, as it is, a fearful mystery, and refered for its immediate source to a personal though superhuman agency; nor is goodness dwarfed from its ideal stature to the dimensions of a little girl, who forbears to disremember her doll or play with a peevish spaniel.

A naked list of dates or other facts, with which the feelings have nothing to do, and in which, as yet, the understanding can recognize little or nothing, is a mere nonentity to the child. It sinks as a dead load into the memory, overtaxing the mechanical powers of retention, whilst it kindles not a spark of feeling nor generates a single genial thought. But let a child's ready sympathy be excited, let the travelled merchant of Bagdad unfold the secrets of his furrowed brow, and the solitary Crusoe detail, by what ingenious contrivances he has fenced out the wild beast from his own savage den, and barely kept soul and body together at the peril of both, in his lonely island, no danger will there be lest the adventures or devices of either should appear to the child too fanciful or minute. He finds no fault with the lavish exercise of supernatural power by friendly or malicious genius; where the marvellous, however absurd to older ears, is so plausible and consistent, so devoutly believed by the several characters of the story-no wonder is it that a child should welcome each new marvel with even heightened interest.

Again, the poetry in which childhood has been said to share so largely, though unconsciously, is not manifested in occasional outbursts of feeling on the active homage which a poet loves to offer to the beautiful; it is not something often banished, and continually overshadowed by the daily formalities of common life, sacred by the "dry light" of science, and the cold analysis to which thought and feeling are subjected in manhood; rather is it a constant stream of silent joy, beating with every pulse, and pervading every sensation. It has no voice of its own to raise, but all the more does it find in the flowers of Eastern language an expression of its own secret impulse; nor need any fear be entertained, lest a mind dieted on such imaginative food in childhood should grow up fantastic or superstitious. In the present state of society such a fear is groundless. The danger now-a-days, is all the other way; and let us beware how, in our fencied wisdom, we undervalue such a talent for appreciation of the marvellous-for from whom did modern science draw its light, and modern art and letters the originating impulse of its excellence, and the models which have provoked its imitative powers

from whom but that race, whose every stream and mountain was hallowed by its appropriate legend, and enshrined, as it were, the personal presence of its god or hero?

More than this, is may truly be said, and it is no new remark, that whatever is most exact, methodic, and elaborate in modern science, is but the mature development of a germ, which lay buried, as the seed in its parent soil, under the misty and confused imaginings of a younger age. No science has ever yet leaped forth, like Athenæ in her panoply, from the head of a Bacon or Descartes. Indistinguishably blended together, even when iisentangled from that heterogeneous combination of childlike thought and feeling, the several sciences were long tinged, as it were, by the glowing wreaths of the retiring mist. Thus astrology was the forerunner of astronomy, alchemy of chemistry. Thus history emerged from the region of fable, under the paternal guidance of Herodotus, till its outlines grew clear and definite under the severe hand of Thucydides The calm and thoughtful Sophocles was the legiti mate descendant of the blind old bard, who sang "the mischief-working wrath of gods and heroes." Plato and Aristotle were the disciples as well as the reformers of that philosophy, which had been stirring into life in the theogony of Hesiod, and was gradually refined and moulded into shape from the rude and chaotic cosmogony of Thales and Anaximander. The imagination of man is the precursor of his understanding. In the Delian Apollo, we may recognise a personification of the subsequent glories of science, art, and literature. Shall we strip him of his golden locks, lest they dazzle the sober eye of Reason? In Hephashis, with his fickle consort, Aphrodite, we see the union of beauty and industry, dissolved, alas! at times, by the devastating god of war. So with the other myths. Not that they were invented to personify such notions, or designed to embody any preconceived truths but they serve to show that the beautiful fancies of an early age are not devoid of meaning. No. They are the heralds of that triumphal march of science which they serve so aptly to illustrate. In fact, the mythology of the Grecks