hese spectacles, cry aloud about the power of
imagination in the young. Indeed, there may be two words to that. It is,
in some ways, but a pedestrian fancy that the child exhibits. It is the
grown people who make the nursery stories; all the children do is
jealously to preserve the text. One out of a dozen reasons why "Robinson
Crusoe" should be so popular with youth, is that it hits their level in
this matter to a nicety; Crusoe was always at makeshifts, and had, in so
many words, to _play_ at a great variety of professions; and then the
book is all about tools, and there is nothing that delights a child so
much. Hammers and saws belong to a province of life that positively
calls for imitation. The juvenile lyrical drama, surely of the most
ancient Thespian model, wherein the trades of mankind are successively
simulated to the running burthen "On a cold and frosty morning," gives a
good instance of the artistic taste in children. And this need for overt
action and lay figures testifies to a defect in the child's imagination
which prevents him from carrying out his novels in the privacy of his
own heart. He does not yet know enough of the world and men. His
experience is incomplete. That stage-wardrobe and scene-room that we
call the memory is so ill-provided, that he can overtake few
combinations and body out few stories, to his own content, without some
external aid. He is at the experimental stage; he is not sure how one
would feel in certain circumstances; to make sure, he must come as near
trying it as his means permit. And so here is young heroism with a
wooden sword, and mothers practise their kind vocation over a bit of
jointed stick. It may be laughable enough just now; but it is these same
people and these same thoughts, that not long hence, when they are on
the theatre of life, will make you weep and tremble. For children think
very much the same thoughts and dream the same dreams as bearded men and
marriageable women. No one is more romantic. Fame and honour, the love
of young men and the love of mothers, the business man's pleasure in
method, all these and others they anticipate and rehearse in their play
hours. Upon us, who are further advanced and fairly dealing with the
threads of destiny, they only glance from time to time to glean a hint
for their own mimetic reproduction. Two children playing at soldiers are
far more interesting to each other than one of the scarlet beings whom
both are busy imitating.