He does not like to be
too much puzzled; but it is simplicity be wants, not silliness. We
fancy their angels, who are always waiting in the courts of our
Father, smile somewhat sadly on the ignorance of those who would feed
them on milk and water too long, and think it would be quite as well
to give them a stone.
There is too much amongst us of the French way of palming off false
accounts of things on children, "to do them good," and showing nature
to them in a magic lantern "purified for the use of childhood," and
telling stories of sweet little girls and brave little boys,--O, all
so good, or so bad! and above all, so _little_, and everything
about them so little! Children accustomed to move in full-sized
apartments, and converse with full-grown men and women, do not need so
much of this baby-house style in their literature. They like, or would
like if they could get them, better things much more. They like the
_Arabian Nights_, and _Pilgrim's Progress_, and _Bunyan's
Emblems_, and _Shakspeare_, and the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_,--at least,
they used to like them; and if they do not now, it is because their
taste has been injured by so many sugar-plums. The books that were
written in the childhood of nations suit an uncorrupted childhood now.
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