dlands reared
on either side of her bay. She might dance into the water, and see her
world dance back. She would fling herself amongst the wavelets where
she stands and splashes. She might give herself up and know nothing
but the beauty and strength around her. It would not teach her to
swim, but she would have taken a step towards the great game of
walking upon the waters.

D.M. RICHARDSON.

TRAVELS IN TWO COLOURS.

One is often tempted to suspect that in some schools there is a
deep-laid plot to destroy in the bud any love for poetry which
children may possess. Otherwise how is it that little boys and girls
are made to commit to memory William Blake at his highest reach of
mystical fire, as in _Tiger, Tiger, burning bright_, or William
Wordsworth at his lowest ebb of uninspired simplicity, as in _We are
seven_? These are very popular, apparently, as poems for children to
recite; yet in the one case it is beyond any teacher's power to show
children the unearthly flaming beauty which alone gives the poem its
peculiar quality and undefinable power; and in the other the maudlin
sentimentalism and almost priggish piety of the verses are positively
dangerous to the child's health of mind. Both types of recitation work
out in the end to this--that when the child attains adolescence, and
the great world of literature dawns on the hungry mind, an evil
association of ideas has been established--the association of poetry,
the highest of all arts, either with the saying of lines without
meaning, or with the learning of "poems" devoid of what wholesome
youth really desires or enjoys.

People may wrangle all night as to whether the normal healthy child is
at heart a mystic or a realist; whether he likes fairy tales because
they show him a magical world where flowers can talk and umbrellas are
turned into black geese, or because they tell of strange romantic
things happening to a real human boy like himself; but there can be no
shadow of doubt that much of the verse intended for children is either
too clever in its humour to make them laugh, or too bald in its matter
or tone to stir the romance that is never quite asleep in their
hearts. There are really surprisingly few versifiers who have
altogether avoided these errors. Some of George Macdonald's _Poems for
Children_ are almost perfect, both as regards lyrical form, simplicity
of language and in the unobtrusiveness of the inner truth they convey.
For example,