at will with question and opinion as it enters the brain. Children don’t learn to talk by chattering to one another, and saying what comes uppermost. Mere listening with intelligence involves an exercise of mental speech, and observant silence opens the pores of the mind as impatient demands for explanation never do.” This is true, inasmuch as it is not the child who is encouraged to talk continually who in the end learns how to arrange and express his ideas. Nor does the fretful desire to be told at once what everything means imply the active mind which parents so fondly suppose; but rather a languid percipience, unable to decipher the simplest causes for itself. Yet where shall we turn to look for the “observant silence,” so highly recommended? The young people who observed and were silent have passed away,--little John Ruskin being assuredly the last of the species,--and their places are filled by those to whom observation and silence are alike unknown. This is the children’s age, and all things are subservient to their wishes. Masses of juvenile literature are published annually for their amusement; conversation is reduced steadily to their level while they are present; meals are arranged to suit their hours, and the dishes thereof to suit their palates; studies are made simpler and toys more elaborate with each succeeding year. The hardships they once suffered are now happily ended, the decorum once exacted is fading rapidly away. We accept the situation with philosophy, and only now and then, under the pressure of some new development, are startled into asking ourselves where it is likely to end. FOOTNOTES: [1] _Life of St. Anselm, Bishop of Canterbury._ By Martin Rule. ON THE BENEFITS OF SUPERSTITION.