true soul, or an earnest sermon or devout prayer, goes deeper into their minds and hearts than they can understand, and they may have a great deal of religion before they know a word of theology. In view of this assimilating force of example and personal character, it is cheering to note the number of our first-class writers who are giving their pens and studies to our children. The authors who figure on the list of contributors to our leading juvenile magazine need not hide their heads before any staff of contributors to any periodical in the country; and they do not seem to lose their wisdom or their wit in getting down from their stately heights to chat and romp with the boys and girls who come thronging to meet them. It is a good sign for our American letters; and I am not ashamed to say, that, after reading some of the numbers of that monthly, and talking over the remainder with a bright child of six, and as bright a girl of eighteen, I felt somewhat envious of the position of those writers, and wondered whether I could write anything that the rising millions of American children would be eager to read. Who might not be envious of the distinction, and which of our poets may not be proud to walk in the steps of Whittier, and sing loving words for the nursery and play-ground, after ringing the liberty-bell and sounding the bugle-call of liberty through the nation? We close these cursory thoughts by presenting one idea that seems to us of the highest importance, although it may strike others as far-fetched or fanciful. It refers to the start that our children are to take in life, or, rather, to the ground from which they are to start. Their destiny depends, of course, upon what they make of themselves in their career; but does it not also depend upon their starting-ground, and is there not something dreary in the frequent remark that we can make anything of ourselves, and the implication that we are nothing at all at the outset? The old civilization reversed this and the great question was not, What shall a man make of himself? but, What is his _status_? and his family or national birthright was more urged than his individual enterprise. Now I am not fighting against our American individualism, or expecting to establish a new national caste; yet may I not hint that it would be well, if our children were brought up in such sense of their native privilege, worth, and respectability as to start upon a solid ground of loyalty and reliance, and to go forth into the world with the feeling, that, whilst they have much to win, they have also much to hold? I would not have them bred in Jewish exclusiveness or pride; yet even that is better than no sense of birthright at all. How striking and suggestive is that trait in the life of one of the most benevolent and liberal-minded of our American Israelites, who, when his leg was broken, and his physician advised amputation, stoutly refused to submit to the