It is alike uncomfortable and useless to a child to be perpetually waylaid by a moral. A child reading "The Pilgrim's Progress" will omit the occasional explanations of the allegory or resolutely ignore their meaning. If you want to keep a poor child on such dry food, don't mistake your own reason for doing so. It may be eminently proper, but it is very uncomfortable to him. If you want children to enjoy themselves, let them run about freely, and don't put them into a ring, in picturesque attitudes, and then throw bouquets of flowers at them. But, if you will do so, confess it is not for their gratification, but for your own. If you choose to try the dangerous experiment of writing "instructive" stories, beware of defeating your own object. You write a story rather than a treatise, because information is often more effective when indirectly conveyed. Clearly, then, if you convey your information too directly, you lose all this advantage. Perfection is as intolerable in these as in any other stories. We all want, especially children, some amiable weaknesses to sympathize with. Thus, in "Ernest Bracebridge," an English story of school-life, the hero is a dreadfully unpleasant boy who is always successful and always right, and we are soon heartily weary of him. Besides, he is a horrible boy for mastery of all the arts and sciences, and delivers brief and epigrammatic discourses, being about twelve years old. However, the book is full of adventure and out-door games, and so far is good. After all, a child does not need many books. If, however, we are to have them, we may as well have good ones. There is no reason why dulness should be diverted from its legitimate channels into the writing of children's books. Let us disabuse ourselves of the idea that these are the easiest books to write. Let us remember that the alphabet is harder to teach than the Greek Drama, and no longer think that the proper man to write children's books is the man who is able to write nothing else. _The Simplicity of Christ's Teachings, set forth in Sermons._ By CHARLES T. BROOKS, Pastor of the Unitarian Church, Newport, R. I. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 1859. 16mo. pp. 342.