Page:Goody Two-Shoes (1881).djvu/15

Rh , inignificant and vapid as Mrs Barbauld's books convey, it eems mut come to a child in the hape of knowledge; and his empty noddle mut be turned with conceit of his own powers when he has learnt that a hore is an animal, and Billy is better than a hore, and uch like, intead of that beautiful interet in wild tales, which made the child a man, while all the time he upected himelf to be no bigger than a child. Science has ucceeded to poetry no les in the little walks of children than with men. Is there no poibility of averting this sore evil? Think what you would have been now, if intead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!

'Hang them!—I mean the cured Barbauld