decreed that the way to knowledge shall be long, difficult, winding, and oftentimes returning upon itself.' Thus, to a vulgar apprehension, a child's mind will be apparently sailing away from its object, when in truth it is only following the devious current which securely leads to it. Of all the errors in education that of overmuch dependence upon teaching is most to be dreaded, because least to be rectified. On this account it is, that, even under the most judicious direction, regular series of lessons never do so much good as when a gap is left here and there for the mind's own operations. There is a self-development in what is involuntarily preferred and unconsciously chosen, which the regular habits of mechanical acquirement are indispensable to promote, but insufficient to attain; there is a wisdom gained to the mind in being left to know both what it can do for itself and what it needs from others, which a continuous form of instruction may assist but can never impart; and those parents or teachers can know but little of the real nature of education, or of the being they have to educate, who hesitate to confess that, after all they may have taught him, the nicest art consists in knowing where to leave him to teach himself.

Such views are far too humiliating to find favour in times when a presumptuous faith is placed alike in the means and ends of mere lifeless acquisition; when the value of knowledge is vulgarly computed only by the numbers of things known and not by their influence on the spirit, and when a melancholy disregard is shown for those higher departments of moral training, the necessity for which increases with the increase of attainment. Under these circumstances it is no wonder that the province of external control should be, by many Mentors, directly reversed in application-enforced where least beneficial, and suspended where most needful. If, accordingly, we have, on the one hand, a set of books, whose greatest art consists in reducing all the healthy portions of the mind to a mere receptive machine, and furnishing every kind of splint and bandage for such distorted limbs as perfect liberty can alone restore-we find, on the other, an equally voluminous class whose highest aim is to encourage voluntary development where voluntary improvement is least to be expected, and to emancipate those departments of the will and the reason for which we know 'service alone is perfect freedom.' Nevertheless there will be times when this cross-purposed emancipation presses somewhat heavily on those who have granted it; there must be seasons when it is good for these little independents to be amenable to some authority-and it is rather amusing to trace what provision has been made for such excessive emergencies. It stands to reason that such enlightened theorists would

never dream of the old-fashioned slavery of implicit obedience, nor the old-fashioned tyranny of absolute authority; instead therefore of the former a host of arguments are resorted to in order to break to the infantine mind, in the most delicate manner possible, the expedience of some kind of submission-voluntary of coursewhile, instead of the latter, a host of apologies are put into the mouths of parents for the excessive liberty of requiring their children to do—how can we express what is so derogatory to their dignity?-to do as they are bid! The consequences of these measures may be easily foreseen; the mind to which we apply such means of conviction has unquestionably the right of remaining unconvinced; and children must be duller than we should wish them to be, who cannot discover that, however admirable the argument, they are still at perfect liberty to dissent.

But to return to that idolatry of teaching which we have designated as the broadest mark of the present juvenile school-we cannot proceed without slightly adverting to those books of compound instruction and amusement in which these tendencies are most carried out, and of the multifarious nature of which something was said on a former occasion. For though a further examination of the subject has the more acquainted us with the excessive ingenuity displayed in this amphibious race, it has also the more convinced us that the ingenuity is utterly wasted; that by a large class of grown-up readers, the works in question are upheld for those very qualities of amusement and interest in which they are most deficient. We admit that it is difficult for a matured mind, in all cases, to form a precise estimate of what is interesting to a child-that it is necessary to recover somewhat of their brightness of vision and keenness of appetite, before we can detect, like them, the schoolmaster beneath every modern variety of sheep's clothing, or feel, like them, what a complete kill-joy he must be to their tastes. But in some instances surely there can be no mistake: in these can any one turn three pages without comprehending how odious it must be to a child to have his head, on all occasions, thrust before his heart to feel that, whatever path of enjoyment he may enter, an ambuscade of knowledge is lurking ready to rush down upon him and intercept it? What grown up lady, for example, while engrossed in a beautiful poem, could bear to stop and be informed whether the verse were in iambics, or trochaics, dactylics, or anapastics, with a long dissertation upon the distinc tions between the same? Who, while devouring an interesting tale, could tolerate, at the most stirring part, to be called off for a lesson upon the different terms of rhetoric-to be taught that the urgent supplications for mercy, or disjointed ejaculations of

despair

despair of the dying hero or desperate heroine, were precise specimens of ecphonesis or aposiopesis, or any other tremendously learned word, to be picked up, as we did these, from a child's catechism?* The authors of such works are loud in assurances of their adaptation to the minds and tastes of childhood, and profuse in examples of their beneficial influence; but how truly could their little readers retort with the fable of the Lion and the Man!' They are delighted, it is true, with the romantic story of Peter the Wild Boy,' but they have not the slightest curiosity to know the natural history, or Linnean nomenclature, of the pig-nuts he ate.

There is, however, even in these days a section of works, the guiding principle of which is not so much what they shall put into the mind as what they shall keep out, and where the anxiety to exclude all that may be pernicious has also sacrificed all that is nourishing. There are some writers by whom their young readers are treated rather as languid, listless invalids, than as healthy, hungry boys and girls-who know no medium between ardent spirits and barley-water—and, for fear of repletion or intoxication, put their readers on a diet on which they may exist, but can never thrive. Nothing truly has surprised us more, in our tour through little libraries, than to see the wishy-washy materials of which not a few are composed-the scanty allowance of ideas with which a narrative is held together, and the mere prate with which the intervals are filled up. There are some children doubtless who relish this barren fare, as there are plenty of older ones who devour the most vapid novels; and both cases are alike pitiable. We have known a boy of fifteen whose energies were so sapped as not to be at the trouble of finishing King Lear, and a girl of about the same age whose tastes were so rarefied that she stuck fast in the Heart of Mid-Lothian. Mere children especially may be brought so low as not to take interest in what most amuses others; nay, instances are not failing of unfortunate beings whose capacities, both for work and play, had been so desperately mismanaged that they had as little energy left for the one as for the other.

Of course the quality of such works varies somewhat with the writer, though the principle of neutrality remains the same; and sometimes a little frothy liveliness of dialogue is exhibited, which might perhaps amuse an older generation, but is very much thrown away upon children. At best, their notions of smartness and repartee are very limited. They like the jingle of words which compose a pun, but the point is utterly lost upon them. Nor can it be otherwise, since all wit and irony ne

*Pinnock's Catechism of Rhetoric'!

cessarily

cessarily derive their weapons from an acquaintance with the world; and therefore cannot exist in children, or is sure to disgust when it does. A practical joke is therefore the only species which they thoroughly understand, and always like; but, in an abstract way, the fable-book is their only Joe Miller, and that as much from the marvellousness as the humour of its contents. They can see some fun in the connexion of human speech and ideas with the nose of the fox or the bill of the raven, while the far-fetched wit of a fellow-child will strike them as great nonsense. Children are sharp casuists as to what is put into a child's mouth. They detect intuitively what is absurd, or what is unnatural; and could we see into their hearts we should find a secret contempt for, or grudge against, the little pedantic spokesman whose perorations form the greater part of such volumes. Under the best of circumstances, we doubt whether children, who are beyond mere babyhood, enjoy the histories and pictures of their own life and times' as much as their elders suppose. For us these scenes of childhood, described as some of our modern writers can describe-for us these scenes have an ineffable charm; but we must remember that we stand in direct contrary position to their ostensible readers. We look fondly back to childhoodthey, ardently forward to maturity; we magnify the happiness that is past-they, that alone which is to come. For them, men and women are gods and goddesses; and no description of the Paradise they now occupy interests them half as much as a peep into that Olympus which they hope one day to climb.

But to return to this very circumspect generation of little books. Connected with them may be mentioned a kindred class of mediocrity which, if they do not absolutely tie the mind to their apronstrings, are always reminding it of the length of its tether. The obvious intention of these writers is to do good, but the very officiousness of their services renders them unpalatable. The truth is, there is no getting rid of them. From the moment you open the book the moral treads so close upon your heels as to be absolutely in the way. Children have no sooner begun to enjoy, than they are called upon to reflect; they have no sooner begun to forget that there exists in the world such a little being as themselves, than they are pulled back to remember not only what they are, but what they will one day infallibly become. In short, the young idea is not left to shoot one moment in peace, but is twitted and snubbed the whole way through with a pertinacity of admonition, injunction, and advice, which, from its studious incorporation with the tale itself, is more than usually difficult to elude. In this respect the old school was far more considerate. You were allowed to have the story part all to yourself, while the good

good advice and personalities were carefully summed up in three awfully dry lines at the conclusion, labelled, for fear of mistake, MORAL,' which you treated at will, and either swallowed whole or skipped altogether. The consequence, it is true, of this plan was, that children became accustomed to look on tale and moral as two utterly distinct concerns, in no way connected except by conventional proximity; and the little girl of ten years old, who had just been devouring a story where this usual appendage was failing, on being questioned as to the moral, earnestly denied the fact of there being any at all, and brought up her book to prove it! Certain it is that if the moral does not find its way to the heart through the narrative itself, it will scarcely reach it in a subsequent set form; yet the present plan of general distribution is by far the worst of the two, inasmuch as, by the perpetual interruption to the sympathies, you lessen the effect of the tale, and with it the chance of edification. We should always bear in mind that the instruction, whether moral or intellectual, arising from works avowedly of amusement, can be only incidental. It is of no use endeavouring to teach in hours which children consider exempt from learning they like neither lessons nor lectures in their wrong places, or they cease to be children if they do.

We pass on to another description of juvenile works, which, considering all the parade of protection implied in those we have quitted, have rather puzzled us. It would seem that parents who would on no account permit their children to wander among the absurd extravagances of fictitious life, will not hesitate to introduce them to the pitiful meannesses of real life—would far rather they should dwell on the vulgarities of mere fashion-the nonsenses of mere convention, or the behind-the-scenes of what is most contemptible in the world that is about them-than on the high-flown exaggerations and impossible atrocities of a world with which they have nothing to do. With a certain class of writers facts are truth, and fable falsehood—no matter what either may be in themselves. Children are welcome therefore to know all about the petty hopes and contrivances of a modern dasher— the vanities and flirtations of a modern coquette; but Heaven forbid their being tempted to imitate the cabals of the grand vizier, or the loves and intrigues of Shelsemnihar and the Prince of Persia. Accordingly we have the mean calculations of mushroom manufacturers, the dirty tricks of low lawyers, the personal animosities and emulations of their wives and families, and the eventual smash of all parties, with other scenes of domestic and professional degradation, put into a familiarity of form which is ten times more disgusting as reminding us for whose eyes it is especially intended. God knows, parents need be in no hurry to