the more limited truths of literal records of fact. In
the beginning they are, to children, only stories, but we know ourselves
that we can never exhaust the value of what came to us through the story
of the wanderings of Ulysses, or the mysterious beauty of the Northern
and Western myths, as the story of Balder or the children of Lir. The
art of telling stories is beginning to be taught with wonderful power
and beauty, the storyteller is turning into the pioneer of the
historian, coming in advance to occupy the land, so that history may
have "staked out a claim" before the examining bodies can arrive, in the
dry season, to tread down the young growth.

The second period makes appeal to the intelligence, as well as to the
imagination, and to this stage belongs particularly the study of the
national history, the history of their own race and country; for English
girls the history of England, not yet constitutional history, but the
history of the Constitution with that of the kings and people, and
further the history of the Empire. To this period of education belong
the great lessons of loyalty and patriotism, that piety towards our own
country which is so much on the decline as the home tie grows feebler.
We do not want to teach the narrow patriotism which only finds
expression in antagonism to and disparagement of other countries, but
that which is shown by self-denial and self-sacrifice for the good of
our own. The time to teach it is in that unsettled "middle age" of
childhood when its exuberant feeling is in search of an ideal, when
large moral effects can be appreciated, when there is some opening
understanding of the value of character.

If the first period of childhood delights in what is strange, this
second period gives its allegiance to what is strong, by preference to
primitive and simple strength, to uncomplex aims and marked characters;
it appreciates courage and endurance, and can bear to hear of sufferings
which daunt the fastidiousness of those who are a few years older;
perhaps it can endure so much because it realizes so little, but the
fact remains true. This age exults in the sufferings of the martyrs and
cannot bear the suggestion that plain duties may be heroic before God.
There is a great deal that may be done for minds in this period of
development by the teaching of history if it is not crippled in its
programme. To make concrete their ideals of greatness in the right
personalities--a work which