Perhaps the only library of literature that is perfectly suited to its purpose and its public, and the only collection of masterpieces to be put into the hands of its readers without misgiving, is the nursery rhymes that we call _Mother Goose's Melodies_. It needs no more general praise, and there is no room for specifications. But it is always in order to urge teachers in this case, as in that of the fairy-tales, to increase their knowledge of those traditionary bits of art. When one knows their origin and something of their social and literary history, they take on new dignity and importance. One ceases to look upon them as mere nonsense to be rattled off for the amusement of the baby, and learns to see them as little treasures of primitive art, miraculously preserved and passed down from baby to baby through these many generations: bits of old song and ballad, games and charms, riddles and incantations, tales of charming incidents and episodes--a gallery of unmatchable portraits, sallies of wit just witty enough for the four-year-old, mild but adequate nonsense; all freed by the lapse of years and the innocence of its devotees from every taint of utilitarianism and occasionalism, winnowed and tested by the generations of mothers and babies that have criticized them, they yield a new charm at every fresh reading to the most experienced reader. They should constitute the first literary material of every English-speaking child. Every well-nurtured child will come to school already in possession of many of them. But he will be glad to go over them for the sake of those less fortunate, as well as for the sake of enjoying them with the whole community, and in consideration of the new pictures, games, and songs that will be joined with them. Stevenson's _A Child's Garden of Verses_ is in some sense a quite unique poetic production; and this remains true in spite of the many things produced in imitation of it and inspired by it. It is a wonderful example of the recovery by a grown person of the thread of continuity leading him back to actual childhood; the recovery, too, in many instances of the child's consciousness. It is the gate for us all to the lost garden of our own childhood, pathetic in every line with the evanescence of childhood, "whose hand is ever at his lips, bidding adieu." Yet in spite of this most poignant appeal to the grown-up person, many of the verses are ideally suited to children. They do not induce in them our mood of pathos and regret, nor do they set their child-readers imaginatively in another experience. They do very really constitute, as Stevenson suggests, a window through which the child sees Another child far, far away, And in another garden, play; a child with whom he tenderly sympathizes, at whom he lovingly smiles, at whose games he looks on, whose toys and books he knows and loves.