On this page

• Departments (1)
  • 
• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    The Story without an End. 71

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    no more can we see why the children should have all the pretty books ;—to themselves , that is ; for we do not set up an exclusive privilege ; we are for free trade , and universal sympathy . But we do protest against putting this volume into the category of children ' s books . Did not Bonaparte fall through ambition , and set the final seal to the proved impossibility of universal empire ? Let children and their champious think upon that ,, and have some moderation . They have surely enough to content any Christian and charitable child . Is there not Tom Thumb ? The

    (mighty Thumb whose prowess astonished even our King Arthur ? Have they not Jack the Giant Killer , the glorious John' of Lilliputian celebrity , who besides cutting off the heads of the bi g people , filled not only his belly but his bag with pudding ? Have they not Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday , whose black head

    one remembers feeling beneath one ' s foot ? And are not theirs the Arabian Nights ? Do they not see the beautiful lady come and touch the fishes with her wand , and make them speak ? and is not the good Haroun Alraschid listening under the window while they are reading ? Have they not but we will not

    proceed . We have some tenderness for Oxford , notwithstanding its Toryism ; we will not shame its libraries , though the doors be locked , and the keys lost , and the manuscripts mouldy ; and the Dissenters making a dust . We will not proceed in our catalogue , nor show how in used and appreciated literary riches , the babies

    beat the Bodleian . We will consent to a compromise . I here shall be a treaty of reciprocity . The Queen of Translators , who has planted our English banner on this lovely region , has dedicated it to her daughter ; and it is not for us to be obstinate . We will be both just and generous in stating how the case stands .

    The book is a good book for children . It is a beautiful and useful book for children . It is worth volumes of grammar , and geography , and history , and botany , and mineralogy , and geology , and chronology , and theology , and omniology . Never before have we seen such a picture of an Infant Soul living and loving in the bosorr \ of nature . And what can be better for a child than that ? li' there must be an interpreter between

    childhood and the flowers , birds and insects , let the office be filled by this book . It expounds all their languages like a Bowriiig or an Adelung . The sweet silver tube that it is , through which infancy may listen to the ringing of the harebells . Come , come along , little ones ! Don ' t think we ever meant to quarrel with you , especiall y about such a book as this . Come and let us all breakfast with the child , and make a feast , and then we must away to other business .

    • There was once a child who lived in a little hut , and in the hut there was nothing but a little bed and a looking-glass , which hung in a dark corner . Now the child cared nothing at all about the looking-glass ; but as soon as the first sunbeam glided softly though the casement and

    The Story Without An End. 71

    The Story without an End . 71

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1834, page 71, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2629/page/73/