ome minds they have probably had a fatal influence.
Yet such is the prejudice engendered by early associations, that many
grave persons, whose first reading was of the kind we have mentioned,
lament the repudiation of "Mother Goose" and her kindred train, and
deem it a mistake to use books in their place founded on the idea of
Mrs. Barbauld's works--that truth is the proper aliment of the infant
mind, as well calculated to stimulate the faculties as fiction, and
that its exhibition is the only safe and honest mode of dealing with
those whose education is intrusted to our care.

The success of the school at Palgrave remained unimpaired; but the
unceasing call for mental exertion, on the part of the conductors,
which its duties required, so much injured their health, that, after
eleven years of unremitting labor, an interval of complete relaxation
became necessary; and Mrs. Barbauld accompanied her husband, in the
autumn of 1785, to Switzerland, and afterwards to the south of France.
In the following year they returned to England, and, early in 1787,
took up their residence in Hampstead, where, for several years, Mr.
Barbauld received a few pupils.

In 1790, Mrs. Barbauld published an eloquent and indignant address to
the successful opposers of the repeal of the corporation and test
acts. In the following year was written her poetical epistle to Mr.
Wilberforce, on the rejection of the bill for abolishing the slave
trade. In 1792, she published "Remarks on Mr. Gilbert Wakefield's
Inquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social
Worship;" and in 1793, she produced a work of a kind very unusual for
a female--a sermon, entitled "The Sins of Government Sins of the
Nation." In all these works Mrs. Barbauld showed those powers of mind,
that ardent love for civil and religious liberty, and that genuine
and practical piety, by which her life was distinguished, and for
which her memory will long be held in reverence. In particular, her
"Remarks on Mr. Wakefield's Inquiry" may be noticed as being one of
the best and most eloquent, and yet sober, appeals in favor of public
worship that has ever appeared.

Our youthful readers will be pleased to learn that Mrs. Barbauld wrote
some of the articles in that entertaining work by her brother, Dr.
Aikin, entitled "Evenings at Home." These contributions were
fourteen in number. It would be useless to distinguish them here,
or to say more concerning them than that they are eq