=Children’s Literature.=—The subject of ‘Children’s Literature’ has been well threshed out, and only one thing remains to be said,—children have no natural appetite for twaddle, and a special literature for children is probably far less necessary than the book-sellers would have us suppose. Out of any list of ‘the hundred best books,’ I believe that seventy-five would be well within the range of children of eight or nine. They would delight in _Rasselas_, _Eöthen_ would fascinate them as much as _Robinson Crusoe_, the _Faëry Queen_, with its allegory and knightly adventures and sense of free moving in woodland scenery, would exactly fall in with their humour. What they want is to be brought into touch with living thought of the best, and their intellectual life feeds upon it with little meddling on our part. =Independent Intellectual Development of Children.=—We do not sufficiently recognise the independent intellectual development of children which it is our business to initiate and direct, but not to control or dominate. I know a little girl of nine who pined every day because the poems of Tennyson which she loved best were not to be found in the volumes of the larger works, which were all the house she was visiting at afforded. She literally missed her favourite poems as a child would miss a meal; and why not? The intellectual appetite is just as actual and just as exigeant as bodily hunger; more so, alas, in some cases. Miss Martineau has a charming story[9] of the intellectual awakening of “a schoolboy of _ten_ who laid himself down, back uppermost, with Southey’s _Thalaba_ before him, on the first day of the Easter holidays, and turned over the leaves, notwithstanding his inconvenient position, as fast as if he were looking for something, till in a few hours it was done, and he was off with it to the public library, bringing back the _Curse of Kehama_. Thus he went on with all Southey’s poems and some others through his short holidays, scarcely moving voluntarily all those days except to run to the library. He came out of the process so changed that none of his family could help being struck by it. The expression of his eye, the cast of his countenance, his use of words, and his very gait were changed. In ten days he had advanced years in intelligence; and I have always thought that this was the turning-point of his life. His parents wisely and kindly let him alone, aware that school would presently put an end to all excess in the new indulgence.” As there is no religious conversion for the child who has always been brought up in the conscious presence of God, so parents who have always satisfied the intellectual craving of their children must needs forego the delight of watching a literary awakening. A little girl brought up on temperance principles, who said, ‘I am so sorry my father isn’t a drunkard,’ that she might rejoice in his reformation, put the case for us very plainly.