d
the angelic forms which meet the Pilgrim as Two Men of the Land of
Beulah ought to have enticed her imagination into reading, whether she
understood or not.

Certain it is, at all events, that comprehension is not necessary to the
appreciation of masterpieces. In an age less remote than Dr. Johnson's,
although still antediluvian with respect to the now prevailing flood of
juvenile literature, children often read and liked what they did not
understand. There were fairy-tales, to be sure, even then, and tales
popular and moral, also a few such books as "Amy Herbert" and "Laneton
Parsonage," but children who were fond of reading soon had those by
heart, and would then browse, perchance, in their elders' pastures, by
which means it happened that one child used to derive no little
satisfaction from the "True Account of the Apparition of Mrs. Veal to
Mrs. Barlow." Told as it is with Defoe's inimitable circumstantiality,
she was so far from understanding it as to rather more than half believe
it. She knew well that ghosts at night-time, robed in white, were
fabulous and never to be thought of, especially when one was alone in
the dark; but a ghost that paid visits in broad daylight, dressed in
bonnet and shawl like anybody else, and whose proceedings were gravely
chronicled for grown persons and labelled _true_,--what were you to
think of that? It may be remembered that when Mrs. Barlow asks Mrs. Veal
any question the answering of which would seem to be inconsistent with
her ghostly state, Defoe says, "However, she waived that;" and, _waive_
not being at that time in the vocabulary of the young reader, she always
imagined Mrs. Veal putting the question away from her, as it were, with
a motion of her hand, and gazing the while in stony silence at Mrs.
Barlow. This dramatic situation was calculated to have a certain effect
upon the nerves, and in fact it was then that the profound silence of
the room, accentuated by the ticking of the clock, used to seem fraught
with the possibility of a ghost abroad with her visiting-list, who
might presently be _waiving_ such courtesies as even an unwilling
hostess would feel constrained to offer.

Rather unhealthy reading, one would say, but yet not so bad as it
sounds; for the book was no sooner shut than the whole impression
dissolved, though it might be renewed at will, as it often was. It was
in the same family that all the children at an early age took possession
of "Oliver Twist" as