because Charles_town_ burned while the battle of Bunker Hill was fighting--as "John Bull in America" passes in half an hour from Boston, where the folk make wooden nutmegs, roast witches, and bake pumpkin pies, into Charleston, where they gouge and stab, drink mint juleps, eat young negroes, and feed old ones upon cotton seed. The narrative before us is couched in a dialogue, between a mother and her two children; and, being obviously designed for gentlemen and ladies not much higher than mamma's rocking chair, has frequently an infantine simplicity of style, that makes us marvel at our own moral courage, in daring to serve up such a baby's mess. Convinced, however, that _children's reading_ may afford both amusement and instruction to grown people, (witness "Early Lessons," "Frank," "The Parent's Assistant," "Sandford and Merton," and "Evenings at Home," _cum pluribus aliis_;) believing, at any rate, that among the palates for which it is our duty to cater, there are some youthful ones to which this dish may be both pleasant and useful; hoping, too, that by having her faults of composition noted, the authoress may be induced to cure, or "others in like cases offending" be moved to shun them, we make the venture. Indeed, not only the book's childishness of style, but many offences far more atrocious in a critic's eyes--sins against grammar, idiom, and good taste--are in great part redeemed by the good sense and justness of its reflections, the interesting tenor of its incidents, and the virtuous glow it is calculated to kindle. The sins are very many. "_Lay_," used for "_lie_," is wholly unwarranted--scarcely palliated--even by the example of Byron, in the Fourth Canto itself: for he was compelled by duress of rhyme; a coercion, which the most tuneful and the most dissonant are alike powerless to resist. "Mr. Warren, the father of Joseph, while walking round his orchard to see if every thing was in good order, as he was looking over the trees, _he_ perceived," &c. Here is a nominative without any verb. There is a four or five fold vice in the second member of the following sentence, in which, as it stands, the writer may be defied to show a meaning: "It often happens that a mother is left with a family of young children, and is obliged to bring them up without the controlling power of a father's care; it is therefore the duty of every female so to _educate_ her own mind, and _that_ of her daughters, as to _enable_ her, if she should be placed in this responsible situation, _to be able_ to guide aright the minds of those under her care." _Enable_ her _to be able!_ _Educate_ her own mind! and _that_ of her daughters! Are they to be supposed to have but _one_ mind among them, as the Sirens had but one tooth? The use of _educate_ for _train_, is a match for the Frenchman's blunder, who, finding in the Dictionary that to _press_ means to _squeeze_, politely begged leave to _squeeze_ a lady to sing. "Enable HER." Enable whom? Why