it, or at the moment when we are able to understand its value, dawns
upon the mind. Then we are grateful to those who invested these revenues
for us though we knew it not. We are not grateful to those who give us
the less good though pleasant and easy to enjoy. A little severity and
fastidiousness render us better service. And this is especially true for
girls, since for them it is above all important that there should be a
touch of the severe in their taste, and that they should be a little
exacting, for if they once let themselves go to what is too
light-heartedly popular they do not know where to draw the line and they
go very far, with great loss to themselves and others.

One of the beautiful things of to-day in England is the wealth of
children's literature. It is a peculiar grace of our time that we are
all trying to give the best to the children, and this is most of all
remarkable in the books published for them. We had rather a silly moment
in which we kept them babies too long and thought that rhymes without
reason would please them, and another moment when we were just a little
morbid about them; but now we have struck a very happy vein, free from
all morbidness, very innocent and very happy, abounding in life and in
no way unfitting for the experiences that have to be lived through
afterwards. No one thinks it waste of time to write and illustrate books
for children, and to do their very best in both, and the result of
historical research and the most critical care of texts is put within
the children's reach with a real understanding of what they can care
for. A true appreciation of the English classics must result from this,
and the mere reading of what is choice is an early safeguard against the
less good.

Reading, without commentary, is what is best accepted; we are beginning
to come back to this belief. It is agreed almost generally that there
has been too much comment and especially too much analysis in our
teaching of literature, and that the majesty or the loveliness of our
great writers' works have not been allowed to speak for themselves. We
have not trusted them enough, and we have not trusted the children so
much as they deserved. The little boy who said he could understand if
only they would not explain has become historical, and his word of
warning, though it may not have sounded quite respectful, has been taken
into account. We have now fewer of the literary Baedeker's guides who
stopped us