ritten little eight-year-old
Thomas Macaulay: "I think we have nearly exhausted the epics. What say
you to a little good prose? Johnson's 'Hebrides,' or Walton's 'Lives,'
unless you would like a neat edition of Cowper's poems or 'Paradise
Lost.'"

Miss More's influence upon the character of Sunday-school books in
England undoubtedly did much to incline many unknown American women of
the nineteenth century to take up this class of books as their own field
for religious effort and pecuniary profit.

Contemporary with Hannah More's writings in the interest of religious
life of Sunday-school scholars were some of the literary products of the
painstaking pen of Maria Edgeworth.

Mention of Miss Edgeworth has already been made. About her stories for
children criticism has played seriously, admiringly, and contemptuously.
It is not the present purpose, however, to do other than to make clear
her own aim, and to try to show the effect of her extremely moral tales
upon her own generation of writers for American children. It is possible
that she affected these authors more than the child audience for whom
she wrote. Little ones have a wonderful faculty for seizing upon what
suits them and leaving the remainder for their elders to discuss.

Maria Edgeworth's life was a long one. Born in seventeen hundred and
sixty-seven, when John Newbery's books were at the height of their fame,
she lived until eighteen hundred and forty-nine, when they were scarcely
remembered; and now her own once popular tales have met a similar fate.

She was educated by a father filled with enthusiasm by the teachings of
Rousseau and with advice from the platitudinous family friend, Thomas
Day, author of "Sanford and Merton." Only the truly genial nature and
strong character of Miss Edgeworth prevented her genius from being
altogether swamped by this incongruous combination. Fortunately, also,
her busy practical home life allowed her sympathies full sway and
counteracted many of the theories introduced by Mr. Edgeworth into his
family circle. Successive stepmothers filled the Edgeworth nursery with
children, for whom the devoted older sister planned and wrote the
stories afterward published.

In seventeen hundred and ninety-one Maria Edgeworth, at her father's
suggestion, began to note down anecdotes of the children of the family,
and later these were often used as copy to be criticised by the little
ones themselves before they were turned over to the