THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDREN’S BOOKS (From the Daily News.) IN a new American monthly, the Radical, Mr. E. W. Win throp has written an indignant protest against the “ merciless cruelty of children’s books.” He charges that although the hideous doll of the past has become extinct, and would terrify the poorest child of to-day if admitted to the baby house, the tragical horrors of the ancient story-books are still preserved. Mr. Winthrop instances the “ Babes in the Wood,” with its heartrending narratives of the dying parents, the sad parting, the cruel uncle, the ruffians, the murder of one of them, the slow starvation of the babes, all so poorly compensated by the kindliness of the robins in covering them with leaves; and also the direful story of Cock Robin s Courtship, and his death in the heyday of wedded happiness. His strongest appeal is against the tragedy of “ Little Red Ridinghood." "The pic ture of the wolf in bed in the grandmother’s nightcap, and the dreadful dialogue beginning, 'Grandmother, what great eyes you’ve got,’ is enough to make a child’s flesh creep with horror. We positively assert that we would rather be devoured any day by the wolf at one mouthful than cause one-half the misery to one-half the little ones that this story gives. And the French ending, which saves little E. R. at the critical moment by the woodmen, does not help it much ; there still remains the swallowed grandmother.” As might be naturally supposed, Dr. Watts does not find much favour with tho writer. He denounces the holding up of the “terrors of the law” over children, and tells a story of two children of his own acquaintance who, after reading the verse in “ Songs for the Little Ones at Home,” beginning “There is a dreadful hell,” tried to commit suicide by holding their breaths. He commends the custom which, it seems, prevails among some mothers, of cutting out such pictures as those which seek to awaken an interest in foreign missions by representing croco diles swallowing children cast to them by Hindoo mothers. The chief sinners Mr. Winthrop holds to be Jane and Ann Taylor. Recognising their good intentions, the writer declares that their poems for the young filled his childhood with terrors. The childish offences against which they seek to warn the young are, he holds, rarely connected with the ter rible retributions which filled his imagination, and so the moral purpose of the verses is itself invalidated. We have all read the story of the little boy who wept at the picture of Daniel in the lion’s den—not for the prophet, but “for the poor little lion who wasn’t getting any." But on the other hand, there are children of acute, or perhaps precocious sensibilities, who can be made to weep at the desolations of a broomstick kept out in the pitiless snowstorm ; and these do undoubtedly, suffer much from some of the tragical legends of the nursery. Story-books, however, will always be written for the average child ; and it is just possible that the great dis proportion often observed between the fault which the story teller would reprove and the dire retribution awarded it has grown gradually out of the incapacity exhibited by so many children of being reached by any but terrible results. Thus, when Miss Ann Taylor would frighten little nest-robbers, it might be enough for one or two children to depict the sorrows of the parent birds at the loss of their young; but to four out of five the picture she draws of a vast monster, stalking up to the child’s bed and flying away with it would probably be found more effectual. Nevertheless, so long as Nature affixes to each offence its proper and logical penalty, it must be ad mitted to be a very questionable morality which seeks to secure good behaviour by suggesting unnatural consequence for the reverse. In the course of time the child will discover that they who go a-swimming on Sunday are not always drowned, nor they who play with fire always burnt to ashes; and when these myths have been exploded, it may become more difficult to show the actual benefits of the Sunday and the real dangers of fire. Equally questionable are the books which bring to bear upon the young mind the deeper pro blems of religious expcrience and the vast mysterics of death. There are few who have been fed on such strong meat in early life who do not feel a certain relief when some little reac tionist asserts his right to his childhood, though it be with the boy in Punch, who says to his brother, “ Don’t be a good boy. Johnny; good boys always die.” Since Nature has given parents and teachers the physical superiority by which children may be restrained from wrong behaviour, there would seem to be the less need for springing upon them the great engines of moral terror or excitement, which at best can but tear open the flower that should expand naturally. Nor is it impossible that the danger of certain nervous disorders, to which children of a susceptible nature are liable, may be en hanced by such premature mental and moral stimulants.