said, "If all the grown-up people in the world should suddenly fail, what a frightful thing would society become, reconstructed by boys!" Evidently he had in mind a land given over to toffy and foot-ball, but he was strangely mistaken in his notions. Perhaps the carnal little hero of Vice Versâ might have managed matters in this disgraceful fashion; but with Flora Shaw's earnest children at the helm, society would be reconstructed on a more serious basis than it is already, and Heaven knows this is not a change of which we stand in need. In fact, if the young people who live and breathe around us are one third as capable, as strenuous, as clear-sighted, as independent, as patronizing, and as undeniably our superiors as their modern counterparts in literature, who can doubt that the eternal cause of progress would be furthered by the change? And is it, after all, mere pique which inclines us to Miss Edgeworth's ordinary little boys and girls, who, standing half dazed on the threshold of life, stretch out their hands with childish confidence for help?
