Dr. Paris has already shown, in a charming little book treating scientifically of children’s toys, how easy even “philosophy in sport can be made science in earnest.” An earlier genius cut out the whole alphabet into the figures of uncouth animals, and enclosed them in a toybox representing Noah’s Ark, for the purpose of teaching children their letters. Europe, Asia, Africa, and America have been decimated; “yea, the great globe itself,” has been parcelled into little wooden sections, that their readjustment into a continuous map might teach the infant conqueror of the world the relative positions of distant countries. Archimedes might have discovered the principle of the lever and the fundamental principles of gravity upon a rocking-horse. In like manner he might have ascertained the laws of hydrostatics, by observing the impetus of many natural and artificial fountains, which must occasionally have come beneath his eye. So also the principles of acoustics might even now be taught by the aid of a penny whistle, and there is no knowing how much children’s nursery games may yet be rendered subservient to the advancement of science. The famous Dr. Cornelius Scriblerus had excellent notions on these subjects. He determined that his son Martinus should be the most learned and universally well-informed man of his age, and had recourse to all sorts of devices in order to inspire him even unthinkingly with knowledge. He determined that everything should contribute to the improvement of his mind,—even his very dress. He therefore, his biographer informs us, invented for him a geographical suit of clothes, which might give him some hints of that science, and also of the commerce of different nations. His son’s disposition to mathematics—for he was a remarkable child—was discovered very early by his drawing parallel lines on his bread and butter, and intersecting them at equal angles, so as to form the whole superficies into squares. His father also wisely resolved that he should acquire the learned languages, especially Greek,—and remarking, curiously enough, that young Martinus Scriblerus was remarkably fond of gingerbread, the happy idea came into his parental head that his pieces of gingerbread should be stamped with the letters of the Greek alphabet; and such was the child’s avidity for knowledge, that the very first day he eat down to _iota_.