It may be that every mature reader will miss from the list some book
or books of that precious childish literature which once throve and
flourished behind school desks. They were books founded partly on
famous history, as that of Baron Trenck and his escapes from prison,
Rinaldo Rinaldini, and The Three Spaniards. I am told that children do
not now find them in a pedlar's pack as we once found them,
accompanied by buns and peddled like them at recess time. Even if we
should find them both in such a place, they might have no such flavor
for us now. It is something if the flowers of American gossip are
retained in similar stories, even if their atmosphere is retreating
from all the hills. It is enough to know that we have for all our
children the works of Louisa Alcott and Susan Coolidge; that they (p. xv)
have Aldrich's Story of a Bad Boy and Mrs. Dodge's Hans Brinker and
Miss Hale's Peterkin Papers and The William Henry Letters by Mrs.
Diaz. We need not complain so long as our children can look
inexhaustively across the ocean for Andrew Lang's latest fairy-book
and Grimm's Household Stories as introduced to a new immortality by
John Ruskin.
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., _January 4, 1909_.
_APPRECIATIONS_ (p.
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