“The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain” is considered the most famous of Miss More’s tracts. They all are redolent with the common moral ideal, but the local colour in them is real and the glimpses of the poor people, their homes, customs, beliefs, hopes, and despairs are described with minute vividness and with much feeling. Whatever brightness they contain is the sort that is gained by way of contrast,--an ethical resolve to show that things are not so bad that they may not still be worse. “Father,” says the little girl, “I wish I was big enough to say grace. I am sure I would say it heartily to-day; for I was thinking what _poor_ people do who have no salt to their potatoes.” The standard is a narrow one; the child who does not go to church is the bad child; the lack of a new gown fades before the delights over owning a new Bible. Instead of marking books, as the Edgeworths advised, Miss More italicised the passages worthy of memorising. Honest toil is the subject-matter of these stories; the village is the scene of many a vexation. The gaining of knowledge is only a means toward a better understanding of the catechism; one’s duty is to learn to read, else the Holy Writ is a closed subject. There is no aim to carry the children outside of themselves by means of the highest imagination; they are told how they are to cope with their own environment, how to remain satisfied with their own station. They must be rich Christians, but still remain poor people. Although Walpole retracted some of the harsh censure which he at first heaped upon Hannah More, he was not far wrong in his condemnation of her “ill-natured strictures.” The person who does not recognise a tendency, in all this literature, “to protract the imbecility of childhood,” “to arrest the understanding instead of advancing it,” “to give forwardness without strength” has failed to understand the true function of a child’s book--to afford the nursery a good time, is the way Mr. Lucas expresses it.