Page:Books and men.djvu/16

 6 In it they are solemnly counseled never to permit their children to walk or talk with servants, never to let them have a nursery or a school-room, never to leave them alone either with each other or with strangers, and never to allow them to read any book of which every sentence has not been previously examined. In the matter of books, it is indeed almost impossible to satisfy such searching critics. Even Mrs. Barbauld's highly correct and righteous little volumes, which Lamb has anathematized as the "blights and blasts of all that is human," are not quite harmless in their eyes. Evil lurks behind the phrase "Charles wants his dinner," which would seem to imply that Charles must have whatever he desires; while to say flippantly, "The sun has gone to bed," is to incur the awful odium of telling a child a deliberate untruth.

In Miss Edgeworth's own stories the didactic purpose is only veiled by the sprightliness of the narrative and the air of amusing reality she never fails to impart. Who that has ever read them can forget Harry and Lucy making up their own little beds in the morning, and knocking down the unbaked bricks to prove