A child appreciates such mellow tones; there is no reaching down; the picture is distinct, reduced to its truest sentiment. It contains traceries of action, and fairest hints of beneficent nature. It gives a promise of to-morrow. There is no herding into the land of sleep. Let _us_ away! Do you not feel the distinction of dignity in it, rather than “get _you_ to bed”? In Stevenson’s verse the dominant note is retrospective; he returns to childhood with his quota of world experience; he slips into the youthful state, glad of being there once more, yet knowing what it all means to have to leave it again. Night fears and day joys flow through his lines: Away down the river, A hundred miles or more, Other little children Shall bring my boats ashore. There is the preternatural strain of sadness in the make-up of youth; they like to discover in their elders those same characteristics they possess; they will creep to the strong arm of him who marvels as they do at the mystery of silent things. Such a one, even though grown-up, is worth while; he knows what it is to be in bed in summer with “the birds still hopping on the grass”; he knows what it is to be a child. Stevenson, the man, becomes the remembered boy. The poetry for children that has lived is of that quality which appeals to the pristine sense of all that is fair and good and beautiful. Tender love, unfettered joy, protecting gentleness recognise no age; we, who are no longer young, look through the barred gates and up the gravel road, flanked by the dense freshness of green. Somewhere we hear the splash of water, far off we see the intense white of marble. Clinging to the iron bars outside, we watch the girl and boy, we count their footprints in the sand. They stoop to pick the violets as we stooped years ago; they look into the basin of clear water as we looked years ago. And then the path curves out of view. Here is where our appreciative contemplation of childhood becomes self-conscious; we cannot _see_ the little ones doing what we did in years gone by. Perhaps this, perhaps that; we have our first _moral_ doubt. Through the bars we call to the childhood of our memory; we call it to come back. The poet has but to sing of what he found beyond that bend when he was young, of the child he was, who once looked up at him from the clear depths; the boy and girl will creep down the gravel path again, they will marvel at what is told them of revolving suns, of the lost childhood, of the flight of birds, and of the shiver of grass. Let the poet but sing in true notes, making appeal to their imagery, giving them vigour in exchange for their responsiveness, and understanding in exchange for their trust; they will return, even to the iron gate, and take him by the hand. This is what it means to be the laureate of childhood. V. CHARLES AND MARY LAMB; THE GODWINS.