ralising were over-prized, when people
professed to believe that you could admonish children to a state of
perfection which, in their didactic addresses to the small folk, they
professed to obey themselves. It was, not to put too fine a point on it,
an age of solemn hypocrisy, not perhaps so insincere in intention as in
phrase; but, all the same, it repels the more tolerant mood of to-day.
Whether or not it be wise to confess to the same frailties and let
children know the weaknesses of their elders, it is certainly more
honest; and the danger is now rather lest the undue humility of
experience should lead children to believe that they are better than
their fathers. Probably the honest sympathy now shown to childish ideals
is not likely to be misinterpreted, for children are often shrewd
judges, and can detect the false from the true, in morals if not in art.

By 1800 literature for children had become an established fact. Large
numbers of publications were ostentatiously addressed to their
amusement; but nearly all hid a bitter if wholesome powder in a very
small portion of jam. Books of educational purport, like "A Father's
Legacy to his Daughter," with reprints of classics that are heavily
weighted with morals--Dr. Johnson's "Rasselas" and "AEsop's Fables," for
instance--are in the majority. "Robinson Crusoe" is indeed among them,
and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," both, be it noted, books annexed by
the young, not designed for them.

[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "ROBINSON CRUSOE." BY CHARLES KEENE
(JAMES BURNS. 1847)]

The titles of a few odd books which possess more than usually
interesting features may be jotted down. Of these, "Little Thumb and the
Ogre" (R. Dutton, 1788), with illustrations by William Blake, is easily
first in interest, if not in other respects. Others include "The Cries
of London" (1775), "Sindbad the Sailor" (Newbery, 1798), "Valentine and
Orson" (Mary Rhynd, Clerkenwell, 1804), "Fun at the Fair" (with spirited
cuts printed in red), and Watts's "Divine and Moral Songs," and "An
Abridged New Testament," with still more effective designs also in red
(Lumsden, Glasgow), "Gulliver's Travels" (greatly abridged, 1815),
"Mother Gum" (1805), "Anecdotes of a Little Family" (1795), "Mirth
without Mischief," "King Pippin," "The Daisy" (cautionary stories in
verse), and the "Cowslip," its companion (with delightfully prim little
rhymes that have been reprinted lately). The thirty illustrations in
e