ittle Canary Bird, Little George, The
Talkative Little Girl, The Four Seasons, and many others, are
excellent both in point of style and dramatic effect; they are exactly
suited to the understandings of children; and they interest without
any improbable events, or unnatural characters.

In fiction it is difficult to avoid giving children false ideas of
virtue, and still more difficult to keep the different virtues in
their due proportions. This should be attended to with care in all
books for young people; nor should we sacrifice the understanding to
the enthusiasm of eloquence, or the affectation of sensibility.
Without the habit of reasoning, the best dispositions can give us no
solid security for happiness; therefore, we should early cultivate the
reasoning faculty, instead of always appealing to the imagination. By
sentimental persuasives, a child may be successfully governed for a
time, but that time will be of short duration, and no power can
continue the delusion long.

In the dialogue upon this maxim, "that a competence is best," the
reasoning of the father is not a match for that of the son; by using
less eloquence, the father might have made out his case much better.
The boy sees that many people are richer than his father, and
perceiving that their riches procure a great number of conveniences
and comforts for them, he asks why his father, who is as good as these
opulent people, should not also be as rich. His father tells him, that
he is rich, that he has a large garden, and a fine estate; the boy
asks to see it, and his father takes him to the top of a high hill,
and, showing him an extensive prospect, says to him, "All this is my
estate." The boy cross questions his father, and finds out that it is
not his estate, but that he may enjoy the pleasure of looking at it;
that he can buy wood when he wants it for firing; venison, without
hunting the deer himself; fish, without fishing; and butter, without
possessing all the cows that graze in the valley; therefore he calls
himself master of the woods, the deer, the herds, the huntsmen, and
the labourers that he beholds. This is[104] poetic philosophy, but it
is not sufficiently accurate for a child; it would confound his ideas
of property, and it would be immediately contradicted by his
experience. The father's reasoning is perfectly good, and well adapted
to his pupil's capacity, when he asks, "whether he should not require
a superfluous appetite to enjoy sup