comments thereon, when we realize how exclusively the fine, thin perfection of Miss Austen's work appeals to the mature observation of men and women, and how utterly out of harmony it must be with the crude judgment and expansive ideality of a child. I am willing to believe that these abnormally clever little people, who read grown-up books so conspicuously in public, love their Shakespeares, and their Grecian histories, and their "Idylls of the King." I have seen literature of the delicately elusive order, like "The Marble Faun," and "Elsie Venner," and "Lamia," devoured with a wistful eagerness that plainly revealed the awakened imagination responding with quick delight to the sweet and subtle charm of mystery. But I am impelled to doubt the attractiveness of Thackeray to the youthful mind, even when I have just been assured that "Henry Esmond" is "a lovely story;" and I am still more skeptical as to Miss Austen's marvelous hair-strokes conveying any meaning at all to the untrained faculties of a child. Can it be that our boys and girls have learned from Emerson and Carlyle not to wish to be amused? Or is genuine amusement so rare
