It is characteristic of every age that a discontent is always manifest with the conditions as they exist at the time. As early as 1844, the child’s book, _per se_, was brought under rigourous scrutiny by an unnamed critic in the _Quarterly Review_, and what was said then applies equally as well to the state of affairs to-day. But this very entertaining writer, talking in terms of judgment founded upon a keen understanding of what such a book should be, attempts a list of juvenile books which bears all the ear-marks of his age; he finds it necessary to select from the immediate supply; he knows that there is the author of his own era whom he cannot discard. We have a lurking suspicion that, with his canons of criticism, he would have altered his list, could he have looked in perspective. But there was very little range in children’s books of that day; the species was just becoming accentuated, and his element of _timeliness_ had to be regarded. Therefore, while we are pleading with the librarian for a high choice in the selection of books, we know that were the _timely_ volume omitted, simply on the basis that it did not conform with one’s idea of the best, the library would become fixed, like a dead language. The _Quarterly_ article was written at a time when the secularisation of juvenile literature was just beginning to take place; the moral and the educational factors were looking askance, the one at the other, both claiming the boy and girl for instruction, but each from a different basis. Our author pleads for the healthy, normal reader, in whom “still-born” knowledge--mere lifeless acquisition--were a curse indeed! He cries out against the educational catechism, as he does against the moral one. His discriminating thesis advances in threefold manner, for he writes: “Those who insist on keeping the sense of enjoyment rigidly back, till that of comprehension has been forcibly urged forward--who stipulate that the one shall not be indulged till the other be appeased--are in reality but retarding what they most affect to promote.” And again: “Children have no sooner begun to enjoy than they are called upon to reflect; they have no sooner begun to forget that there exists in the world such a little being as themselves than they are pulled back to remember, not only what they are, but what they will one day infallibly become.” And still again: “Children seem to possess an inherent conviction that when the hole is big enough for the cat, no smaller one at the side is needed for the kitten. They do not really care for ‘Glimpses’ of this, or ‘Gleanings’ of that, or ‘Footsteps’ to the other--they would rather stretch and pull....”