who make this mistake, and so sadly libel God's
handiwork. In fact, it is probably safe to say, that, so far as their
mind works, it works with more intensity and quickness than the adult
mind; for they are fresh and unworn, and they put their whole life into
the first play of their faculties. They do not know many things, indeed,
and require constant instruction; but their _intelligence_ is by no
means as defective as their _knowledge_, but is as sharp and unwearied
as their insatiate appetite for food. Talk nonsense to children,
forsooth! Rather talk it to anybody else,--far rather to the pedants and
worldlings who have fooled away their common-sense by burying thought
under book-dust, or by hiding nature under shams and artifices. Children
not only want the true thing said to them, but want to have it said in a
true and fitting way; and no language pleases them so much as the pure,
simple speech which the good old Bible uses, and which all our great
masters of style follow. Any one who has seen the quizzical expression
of a score or two of bright little children in listening to some old or
young proser, who is undertaking to palm off upon them his platitudes
for wisdom and his baby-talk for simplicity, cannot remain long in doubt
as to which party leans most towards the fool.

There is, indeed, great difference between tween the mind of children
and of adults, and literature should respect and provide for this
difference,--although it is true that the best books please and edify
both, and the nursery and parlour can meet in pretty full fellowship
over "AEsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," and "Pilgrim's Progress," if
not over the "Vicar of Wakefield" and Edgeworth's "Popular Tales." The
great distinction between juvenile and adult literature is a very
obvious and natural one. Not to discuss now the absence of business
cares and ambition, children, in their normal, healthful state, know
nothing of love as a passion, whilst it is the conspicuous feature of
adult society, and the motive of all romances for readers of advanced
years, and especially for all who have just passed into the charmed
borders of adult life. I do not say, indeed, that children are to know
nothing of love, or that it should be shut out of their habitual
reading; for love is a part of human life, and is organized into manners
and institutions, and sanctioned and exalted by religion. As a fact, and
as sustaining great practical relations, love is to b