e treated freely in
juvenile literature, but not as a passion. Every boy and girl who reads
the Prayer-Book, and hears every-day talk, and sees what is going on in
the world, knows that men and women marry, and young people fall in love
and are engaged. This is all well, and children's stories may tell
freely whatever illustrates the home usages and social customs of the
people; but the more the love senses and passions are left to sleep in
their sacred and innocent reserve within their mystic cells, so much the
better for the child whilst a child, and so much the better for the
youth when no more a child, and Nature betrays her great secret, and the
charming hallucinations of romance open their fascinations and call for
the sober counsels of wisdom and kindness.

But if love, as a passion, does not belong to our juvenile literature,
its place is fully supplied by a power quite as active and
marvellous,--the mighty genius of play. Try to read a three-volume novel
of love and flirtation to a set of well-trained, healthfully organized
children, or try them with a single chapter that describes the raptures
or the jealousies, and gives the letters and dialogues, of the enamored
couple, who are destined, through much tribulation, to end their griefs
at the altar, not of sacrifice, but of union, and you will find your
auditors ready to go to sleep or to run away. The girls may, indeed,
brighten up, if a famous dress or set of jewels, a great party or grand
wedding, is described; and the boys may open their eyes, if the story
turns upon a smart horse-race or a plucky fight. Children, in their
normal state, do not enter into the romance of the passion, nor should
they be trained to it. They may be bred in all courtesy and refinement
without it; and the girls and boys may be true to their sex, and have
all the gentle manners that should come from proper companionship. The
boys will not want a certain chivalry in the schoolroom, play-ground,
and parlor, and the girls will learn from instinct as well as discipline
the delicacy that is their charm and shield. Nothing can be worse than
to ply them with love-stories, or throw them into the false society that
fosters morbid sentiments and impulses, and gives them the passions
without the judgment and control of men and women. Kind Providence, in
the gift of play, has mercifully averted this danger, and brought our
children into a companionship that needs no precocious passion to give