_Ce que je vois alors dans ce jardin, c’est un petit bonhomme qui, les mains dans les poches et sa gibecière au dos, s’en va au collège en sautillant comme un moineau. Ma pensée seule le voit; car ce petit bonhomme est une ombre; c’est l’ombre du_ moi _que j’étais il y a vingt-cinq ans. Vraiment, il m’intéresse, ce petit: quand il existait, je ne me souciais guère de lui; mais, maintenant qu’il n’est plus, je l’aime bien. Il valait mieux, en somme, que les autres_ moi _que j’ai eus après avoir perdu celui-là. Il était bien étourdi; mais il n’était pas méchant et je dois lui; rendre cette justice qu’il ne m’a pas laissé un seul mauvais souvenir; c’est un innocent que j’ai perdu: il est bien naturel que je le regrette; il est bien naturel que je le voie en pensée et que mon esprit s’amuse à ranimer son souvenir.... Tout ce qu’il voyait alors, je le vois aujourd’hui. C’est le même ciel et la méme terre; les choses ont leur âme d’autrefois, leur âme qui m’égaye et m’attriste, et me trouble; lui seul n’est plus._--_Anatole France_, in “Le Livre de mon Ami.” “_I prefer the little girls and boys ... that come as you call them, fair or dark, in green ribbons or blue. I like making cowslip fields grow and apple-trees bloom at a moment’s notice. That is what it is, you see, to have gone through life with an enchanted land ever beside you...._”--_Kate Greenaway to Ruskin._ I. THE ENGLISH SIDE. Whatever change in children’s literature was now to take place was due entirely to the increasing importance of elementary education. A long while was to elapse before the author was wholly freed from the idea that situations could be dealt with, apart from any overbearing _morale_, and even then he found himself constrained to meet the problem of giving information--of teaching instead of preaching. The interest in external nature, the desire to explain phenomena according to the dictates of belief, infused a new element into authorship for young people. But those writers brought to meet this latent stirring of the scientific spirit all the harness of the old régime. First they thought that they could explain the evident by parables, but they found that fact was too particular for generalisations, and the child mind too immature for such symbol. Then they attempted to define natural objects from a childish plane, making silly statements take the place of truth. They soon became aware that their simple style had to deal with a set of details that could not be sentimentalised.