(_But neither of the happy little truants knows that a thief is running
off with their clothes_.)]

* * * * *

REFORM IN JUVENILE LITERATURE.

Since the thrilling moment when GUTTENBURG made his celebrated
discovery, numbers of persons have tried their hands--and undoubtedly
their heads also--at Books for the Young. Hitherto, many of them have
evinced a sad lack of judgment in respect of matter.

Would you believe it, in this highly moral and virtuous age? they have
actually written stories!--stories that were not true! They haven't
seemed to care a button whether they told the truth or not! Where can
they have contracted the deadly heresy that imagination, feeling, and
affection, are good things, deserving encouragement? Mark the effect of
these pernicious teachings! Hundreds and thousands--nay, fellow mortal,
_millions_ of children,--now walk the earth, believing in fairies,
giants, ogres, and such-like unreal personages, and yet unable (we blush
to say it!) to tell why the globe we live on is flattened at the poles!
Is it not a serious question whether children who persistently ignore
what is true and important, but cherish fondly these abominable fables,
may not ultimately be lost?

But, thanks to the recent growth of practical sense--or the decline of
the inventive faculty--in writers for the young, a better day is
dawning, and there is still some hope for the world. Men of sense and
morality are coming forward: they dedicate their minds to this
service--those practical minds whence will be extracted the only true
pabulum for the growing intellect. It is to minds of this stamp--so
truly the antipodes of all that is youthful, spontaneous, and
child-like, (in a word: frivolous,) that we must look for those solid
works which, in the Millennium that is coming, will perfectly supplant
what may be termed, without levity, the "Cock and Bull" system of
juvenile entertainment. Worldly people may consider this stuff graceful
and touching, sweet and loveable; but it is nevertheless clearly
mischievous, else pious and proper persons wouldn't have said so, time
and again.

For our part, we may as well confess that our sympathies go out
undividedly toward that important class who are averse to
Nonsense,--more particularly _book_-nonsense,--which they can't stand,
and won't stand, and there's an end of it. There is something
exceedingly winning, to us, in that sturdy sense, that thirst for