it charm.

How wonderful it is, this instinct for play, and how worthy of our
careful and serious study! It is the key to the whole philosophy of
juvenile literature: for we take it for granted that books for children
belong to the easy play, rather than to the hard work of life; and that
they are an utter failure, if they do not win their way by their own
charms. Here, in fact, we distinguish between juvenile literature and
school-books. School-books are for children, indeed, but not for them
alone, but for the teacher also, and they are to be as interesting as
possible; yet they are not for play, but for work, and it is best to be
quite honest at the outset, and let the little people know that study is
work and not play, and that their usual gift-books are not for study
mainly, but for entertainment. In this way, study is the more patient
and comforting, and reading more free and refreshing. Children make the
distinction very shrewdly, and are quite willing to pore carefully over
their school-lessons, but are very impatient of lessons that are sugared
over with pleasantry, and detect the pedagogue under the mask of the
playmate. They are willing to have their pills sugared over, but do not
like to have them called sugar-plums.

Playfulness does not require the sacrifice of good sense or sound
principle or serious purpose, but subjects them to certain conditions;
and there is no form in which exalted characters or sacred truths are
brought home more effectually to the hearts both of young and old than
in the stones and dramas that make life speak for itself, and play
themselves into the affections and fancy. It does require that the laws
of attention and emotion, the unities and the varieties of aesthetic art,
shall be observed; and as soon as the book is dull, and offers no
sparkling waters nor fair flowers nor tempting fruits to lure the
flagging reader over its intervals of dusty road or sandy waste, it is a
failure, and not what it pretends to be. With children, play demands
more the _varieties_ than the _unities_ of Art; and their first
education deals with those spontaneous sensibilities and impulses that
insist upon being played upon freely, with little regard to exact
method. Those sports are most pleasing to young children, especially,
that touch the greatest number of the keys of sensation and will, and
make them answer to the pulse of Nature and companionship. One may learn
a deal of philosophy from the mos