It is not easy to go wrong in choosing the ballads. And by "ballads" we are to understand the short narrative poem, traditionary or artistic. The folk-ballads need translation here and there, and are scarcely available at all for the youngest children. But those who are old enough to hear the Robin Hood tales will enjoy the folk-ballads, if the teacher take pains to prepare them and read them aright. As in the case of some of the heroic epics, some editing is necessary for most of the ballads. They should be given in the "say and sing," manner, turning the duller or the link portions into prose narrative, and reading the exciting and beautiful passages in the original form. Even this accommodated form of the folk-ballads may prove impossible in some classes. There are ballads ideal for the grades in nearly all the modern poets--Cowper, Scott, Wordsworth, Campbell, Browning, Longfellow, Whittier, Kipling. It is not so easy to choose for elementary children among the longer narrative poems. As a matter of fact, a great number of them are of the idyllic kind, and there is in this class of poems something soft and meditative, or over-emotional and, if one must say it--sentimental or super-romantic, that fits them for the comprehension of older readers, and spoils them for the children. Others, such as Scott's narrative poems, are too long and a bit too difficult for children younger than the high-school age. Here and there one finds a poem, like "Paul Revere's Ride," really more ballad than tale; a tender simple tale like "King Robert of Sicily," for a mature eighth grade. "The Vision of Sir Launfal;" not forgetting Morris' _The Man Born to Be King_, "The Fostering of Auslag," and perhaps other things from _The Earthly Paradise_. The simple but lofty style and feeling of "Sohrab and Rustum" makes it possible for the older children. Any teacher who knows both literature and children will see at once what it is that constitutes the fitness of these poems, and what the unfitness of "Enoch Arden," "The Courtship of Miles Standish," or "Lancelot and Elaine."