Weekly national intelligencer., 1847-09-11

nale III countries Wnere the sovereign dollar is ever
the presiding idea, then the child will learn more,
orally, than books can yet teach it and will more
over in due time, take, of itself, to books and all
other regular helps to Improvement But if, on the
contrary books are to be its only source of infor-
maton-if It's fondness for them is to grow up
from the duress, the compulsion of parents and
elders, who exhibit in their idle habits and empty
talk only the example of an opposite tase-all the
| volumes that you can cram down the little inno-
cents throat will be vain towards effecting that
which is, at this age, the real object of teaching
not the positive information which you can infx in
the mind, but the love of knowledge and the habit
of pursuing it.
When at rest from its bodily sports tales are the
natural delight of childhood; and these please, at
first, much in proportion as they are dreadful or
amazing To win the attention, they must THAT is
to say) excite the Imagination. Probability-what
critics technically call verismude, land we adopt
the term, that we may propitiate to this long and
semi-meaphysical discourse the besetting fondness
of our countrymen for poysyllabes)- es)-versim-
tude or what might be styled in old English like
lihood we as yet, while children, know very little
about; SO that we are not critical about the FEAST
biiy Of incidents, provided only that they be strk-
/ ing. As to the feelings no great art is necessary
to move them: simplicity and truthlulness, con-
formity to what children can imagine of wo or
wrong of heroism virtue, and the like, are all that
is requisite in these fictions. But they especially
captivate us, if the incidents and characters be
partly upernaural-ghostly, magical, or fairy. OF
all these, the fairy lore seems TO offer, in It's tiny
g machinery "*-its benevolence, grace sparkling
treasures dwar6sh forms, its powerful and yet not
dreadful agencies-that which is filter than all the
rest to delight the childish fancy. Itpossesses sin
gulary too, the advantage Of readily weaving itself
into animated apologues surprising and pleasing,
I q -.
too obvious purpose of instructng, Of ''pointing
a moral does any thing but " adorl tale to the
taste of either young or old; AMI the young, in
particular love TO be instructed without your put
ting on too plain an air of meaning to instruct them
In confirmation of what we have thus attempted
to lay down, we might appeal to multitudes of su-
pernatural and especially of fairy fctons, whose
perpetual charm for the very young nothing else,
of all that has been composed for their benefit has
ever equaed. We need scarcely enumerate, how
ever, the whole body of the genuine simple old
fairy tales, which not merely all who speak our
tongue have at their fingers ends, but which have
travelled from climate to climate, from people to
people, from age to age, transmitted every where
by their power to enchant the uninsructed magma
ton. When will Puss IN Boots, or Ricguet NTH
the Iiyf, or Cinderella, or Catskin,t or Beauty
and the Beast, dozens of others like them,
to instruct because they delight, the little folks
Or who would give, old young, .7laddin's Lamp,
Sinbad the Sailor, the Fisherman and the Genius,
and others of that immortal collection for all the
Reasonable Story-books, and particularly all the
Juvenile PHILOSOPHERS and Infant Universal His
tories, that your maer-offact men or women ever
put into tame truth or pulling probabilities
1t is time however, TO this dissertation, into
which we have fallen without in the least intending
for it any such extent; and, as some compensation
y readers hatever xUen M have tadtnucl,
said upon our theme, we will conclude with beau
tful argument, much akin to our own, in behalf Of
fable and its necessity for the human mind. 1t is
from Coleridge's translation of Schiller's Uaiie-
stem. Quoting from memory, cannot refer TO
the scene. Thekla is there recounting to her aunt
and lover visit which she has by accident made to-
her fathers astrologer; and after her account of
/ him and his mysterious chamber, Max bursts out
into this fine rhapsody, to want, instinc-
tive desire of the supernatural:
oh rudey will blame his faith
In the might of stars and angels 'Tis not only
The human being pride that peoples space
With life and mystical performance
Since likewise TO the stricken heart Of Love
This common nature and this visible earth
Are all too Yea deeper import
Turks in the legends told my childish years
Than lies upon that truth, I" We live to learn"
For Fable is Loves world, his home his birthplace
Delightedy dwells he 'mongst fays and talismans
And spirits, and deightedly believes
Divinities, being himself divine.
| tn Ineligible forms of ancient poets,
| The fair humanilies Of old Religion,
i The power, the beauty, and the majesty
/ That had her haunts by dale piny mountain
/ Or forest, by slow or gushing spring,
Or chasms and watery depthsall these have vanishd
They live no longer in the Faith Of Reason
But still the heart doth need language still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names
And to yon starry heights they gone,
/ Spirits or shapes that used to share this earth
With map with their friend and to the lover
fonder they move, from yonder visible sky
Shoot influence and, to this day,
lis Jupiter who sends whate'er is great,
And Venus who sends every thing that's fair.
| What the Good Genius is, the story itself shuns,
very properly, to disclose, until the end when,
every thing of mered good fortune being finally
accomplished for him, by her agency, she bids the
hero farewell as thus
"Silvo, weeping, vowed eternal gratitude But
as he had only known her as the Bee, he begged Of
her, before leaving him. to tell him to which of the
heavenly Spirits he owed all his welfare
Il am the Spirit" she replied, that attends on
honest desires.'
But your name-your name y he exclaimed
" What can't you guess il p she answered