Nay, but perhaps, the learned editor did not intend the story for children ‘quite in Agnes’s position.’ For what sort did he intend it, then? For the class of children whose fathers keep carriages, and whose mothers dress their girls by the Paris modes, at three years old? Very good; then, in families which keep carriages and footmen, the children are supposed to think a book is a prize, which costs a penny? Be that also so, in the Republican cheap world; but might not the cheapeners print, when they are about it, prize poetry for their penny? Here is the ‘Christmas Carol,’ set to music, accompanying this moral story of the Snow. “Hark, hark, the merry pealing, List to the Christmas chime, Every breath and every feeling Hails the good old time; Brothers, sisters, homeward speed, All is mirth and play; Hark, hark, the merry pealing,— Welcome Christmas Day. Sing, sing, around we gather, Each with something new, Cheering mother, cheering father, From the Bible true; Bring the holly, spread the feast, Every heart to cheer, Sing, sing, a merry Christmas, A happy, bright New Year.” Now, putting aside for the moment all questions touching the grounds of the conviction of the young people for whom these verses are intended of the truth of the Bible; or touching the propriety of their cheering their fathers and mothers by quotations from it; or touching the difficultly reconcileable merits of old times and new things; I call these verses bad, primarily, because they are not rhythmical. I consider good rhythm a moral quality. I consider the rhythm in these stanzas demoralized, and demoralizing. I quote, in opposition to them, one of the rhymes by which my own ear and mind were educated in early youth, as being more distinctly, and literally ‘moral,’ than that Christmas carol. “Dame Wiggins of Lee Was a worthy old soul, As e’er threaded a nee- Dle, or washed in a bowl. She held mice and rats In such antipa-thy, That Seven good Cats Kept Dame Wiggins of Lee.”