e more common incentives to study, which consist of rewards and
punishments, the far surer, nobler and more effective stimulus of
curiosity kept alive by variety and the pleasure of successful
invention. It was the desire of the authors to show with what ease the
faculty of thinking may be cultivated in children, a point on which Miss
Edgeworth insists in other of her tales. In _Harry and Lucy_ are
explained simply and familiarly, sometimes in conversations between the
children and their parents and friends, sometimes in dialogue between
the children themselves, the rudiments of science, principally of
chemistry and physics, and the application of these to the common
purposes of life. And herein we again encounter one of the grand merits
of the Edgeworths, which we can to-day better appreciate than their
contemporaries. They saw clearly what in their day was apprehended only
by very few, the importance that the study of science was to acquire in
the future. Miss Edgeworth says:--

My father long ago foresaw that the taste for scientific as well as
literary knowledge, which has risen so rapidly and spread so
widely, would render it necessary to make some provision for the
early instruction of youth in science, in addition to the great and
successful attention paid to classical literatures.

And even apart from the immense importance of science in our daily life,
science is, of all studies, that best suited to the growth of a child's
mental powers. Novelty and variety are the spells of early life, and to
work these well and helpfully is the greatest good that can be done to
young people. Miss Edgeworth, in _Harry and Lucy_, as a whole succeeds
in rousing her reader's curiosity without making them suspect design,
and avoids all idea of a task. Thus the leading principles of science
are unfolded in familiar experiments which give young learners the
delight they would have in playing some interesting game, exercising
their ingenuity without tiring them. Then, having once felt the
pleasures of success, a permanent incentive to knowledge is induced,
which it remains with the parents or tutors to improve. The books are
obviously not such as are meant to be read at a sitting, and therefore
can only be put into the hands of young people with judicious care. But
in the Edgeworths' time neither old nor young devoured books after the
manner of to-day. The apparently desultory and accidental plan of the
book