Literature differs from other kinds of writing in its use of language, since it constantly aims at beautiful and striking expression. Since it often seeks beautiful and delicate effects, it is more often closely accurate than other kinds of writing; and since it sometimes seeks strong, noble effects, it is sometimes more vigorous than other writing. For the same and kindred reasons it seeks variety of expression, and so displays a larger choice of words, including new and rare words. These facts have an immediate and beneficial effect upon the style and vocabulary of the children. The fact is plainly obvious to anyone who has observed the superiority as to vocabulary and form of those children who have had much reading or who come from a literary family, and has seen the improvement of all the children in these matters as they add to their experience in literature. This enrichment and refinement of language must be reckoned among the distinctive services of literature. Literature, in common with the other arts, but unlike other kinds of writing, aims at beauty--cares first of all for beauty. One must understand the term, of course, as artistic or aesthetic beauty, as it has been interpreted for us from Plato down, as quite other than mere prettiness or superficial attractiveness. First, in the selection of its subject-matter it is the strikingly beautiful in nature, in character, in action, and in experience that it seeks out for presentation. When it uses ugly or horrible material, it is for one of these purposes: by way of bringing into stronger relief beauty actually presented beside it; by way of implying beauty not actually presented; by way of producing the grotesque as a form of beauty; by way of awakening fear or terror, which are elements in one kind of beauty; or by way of accomplishing some exploitation or reform conceived by the artist as his duty or his opportunity; so that the artist's use of ugly material produces in every case some effect of beauty. Now the problem of the child's contact with beauty as the material or subject-matter of literature is the problem of his contact with it anywhere else. We cannot too often remind ourselves that the material in literature is that of life and the actual world chosen out, often freed from accidental and temporary qualities, and put into suitable setting in art. It therefore makes an appeal not different in kind, and in many cases not different in intensity, from the appeal of objects perceived by the actual senses. Accepting once for all the conditions of the imagination, we must conclude that the effect upon the child's taste is the same as in his contact with beautiful and noble objects under conditions of outer space. And as, when we adopt the psychology and pedagogy of Whitman's "There was a child went forth," believing that all that the little traveler encounters becomes really and truly a part of him, we are eager to have him encounter the most