seek
the chief good. We are not afraid to say that our children's books
should be thoroughly republican, or, in the best sense of the word,
democratic, and should aim to give respect to the genuine man more than
to his accidents, and to rank character above circumstance. They should
rebuke the ready American failings, the haste to be rich, the passion of
ostentation, the rage for extravagance, the habit of exaggeration, the
impatience under moderate means, the fever for excitement, and the great
disposition to subordinate the true quality of life to the quantity of
appliances of living. They should especially assail the failing to which
our children are tempted,--the morbid excitement, precocious
sensibility, and airs and ambition to which they are prone. Some of our
best juvenile books, especially some of our best magazine writers, do
great service in this way; and it has seemed to use that we may well
learn wisdom from the juvenile literature of France in this matter, and
translate with profit many of those excellent books for children which
do not for a moment countenance the idea that they are to have any
hot-bed forcing, or have their senses and fancy turn upon the passions
and cares that belong to mature years. Christendom has no cause for
gratitude to France for its adult romantic literature; and it is an
offence to American as to English homes for its free notions of married
life. But the French literature for the young is quite another matter,
and may teach purity and wisdom to the parents who allow their sons and
daughters to ape the ways and often the follies of men and women, and
spoil the flower and fruit of maturity by forcing open the tender bud of
childhood and youth.

We may take quite as serious lessons against the wrong of schooling the
young in precocious care and calculation, and setting a bounty upon the
too ready covetousness of our people. We spend freely, indeed, as well
as accumulate eagerly; but there is a fearful over-estimate of wealth
amongst us, in the absence of other obvious grounds of distinction; and
the evil is nurtured sometimes from childhood. Such books as "The Rich
Poor Man and the Poor Rich Man" do vast good; and it is very important
that our sons and daughters should have a loving, helpful, cheerful,
devout childhood, a true age of gold, to look back upon and ever to
remember, without the taint of Mammon-worship that multiplies care,
blasts prosperity with inordinate desires, a