ars old, point out
every piece of furniture in the French prints of Gil Blas; in the
print of the Canon at Dinner, he distinguished the knives, forks,
spoons, bottles, and every thing upon the table: the dog lying upon
the mat, and the bunch of keys hanging at Jacintha's girdle; he told,
with much readiness, the occupation of every figure in the print, and
could supply, from his imagination, what is supposed to be hidden by
the foremost parts of all the objects. A child of four years old was
asked, what was meant by something that was very indistinctly
represented as hanging round the arm of a figure in one of the prints
of the London Cries. He said it was a glove; though it had as little
resemblance to a glove, as to a ribbon or a purse. When he was asked
how he knew that it was a glove, he answered, "that it ought to be a
glove, because the woman had one upon her other arm, and none upon
that where the thing was hanging." Having seen the gown of a female
figure in a print hanging obliquely, the same child said, "The wind
blows that woman's gown back." We mention these little circumstances
from real life, to show how early prints may be an amusement to
children, and how quickly things unknown, are learnt by the relations
which they bear to what was known before. We should at the same time
observe, that children are very apt to make strange mistakes, and
hasty conclusions, when they begin to reason from analogy. A child
having asked what was meant by some marks in the forehead of an old
man in a print; and having been told, upon some occasion, that old
people were wiser than young ones, brought a print containing several
figures to his mother, and told her that _one_, which he pointed to,
was wiser than all the rest; upon inquiry, it was found that he had
formed this notion from seeing that one figure was wrinkled, and that
the others were not.

Prints for children should be chosen with great care; they should
represent objects which are familiar; the resemblances should be
accurate, and the manners should be attended to, or at least, the
general moral that is to be drawn from them. The attitude of Sephora,
the boxing lady in Gil Blas, must appear unnatural to children who
have not lived with termagant heroines. Perhaps, the first ideas of
grace, beauty, and propriety, are considerably influenced by the first
pictures and prints which please children. Sir Joshua Reynolds tells
us, that he took a child with him through