, however, will depend on capacity and disposition. A child of slower parts may be indulged till nine years old with books which a lively genius will look down upon at seven. A girl of talents will read. To her no excitement is wanting. The natural appetite is a sufficient incentive. The less brilliant child requires the allurement of lighter books. She wants encouragement as much as the other requires restraint."

"But don't you think," said Lady Belfield, "that they are of great use in attracting children to love reading?"

"Doubtless they are," said Mr. Stanley. "The misfortune is, that the stimulants used to attract at first, must be not only continued but heightened, to keep up the attraction. These books are novels in miniature, and the excess of them will lead to the want of novels at full length. The early use of savory dishes is not usually followed by an appetite for plain food. To the taste thus pampered, history becomes dry, grammar laborious, and religion dull.

"My wife, who was left to travel through the wide expanse of Universal History, and the dreary deserts of Rapin and Mezerai, is, I will venture to assert, more competently skilled in ancient, French, and English history, than any of the girls who have been fed, or rather starved, on extracts and abridgments. I mean not to recommend the two last named authors for very young people. They are dry and tedious, and children in our day have opportunities of acquiring the same knowledge with less labor. We have brighter, I wish I could say safer, lights. Still fact, and not wit, is the leading object of history.

"Mrs. Stanley says, that the very tediousness of her historians had a good effect; they were a ballast to her levity, a discipline to her mind, of which she has felt the benefit in her subsequent life.

"But to return to the mass of children's books. The too great profusion of them protracts the imbecility of childhood. They arrest the understanding, instead of advancing it. They give forwardness without strength. They hinder the mind from making vigorous shoots, teach it to stoop when it should soar, and to contract when it should expand. Yet I allow that many of them are delightfully amusing, and to a certain degree instructive. But they must not be used as the basis of instruction, and but sparingly used at all as refreshment from labor."

"They inculcate morality and good actions surely," said Lady Belfield.