Moral Songs' influenced, and even formulated the theological ideas presented to children during the first fifty years of the century-ideas which are perhaps still current to-day. It is no exaggeration to say that the Divine and Moral Songs and the Fairchild Family sum up the Evangelical movement in all its terrors for the nursery. God is an awful and vengeful master who teaches by striking and terrible object lessons. Endless torment, clanking chains and bitter remorse are the fate of the nursery Ananias: while both Mrs Sherwood and Dr Watts persistently represent the child's heart as his direst foe". The Fairchild Family, which was amazingly popular and widely known, has still a fascination for the student. Mr Fairchild, the father, observing his three children of 6, 7, and 9 quarrel, takes them a walk through a gloomy wood in which clanking metallic sounds are heard; these proceed from a gibbet on which a corpse is hanging. The children, two girls and a boy, implore to be taken away but the father declines; seats himself with great deliberation on the stump of a tree and (with quite needless elaboration) tells the story of the poor wretch to the In Dr Watts' wonderful book he deals incidentally with the animal world. Here is a specimen of his teaching: "If we had been ducks, we might dabble in mud, But Thomas and William, and such pretty names, Should be cleanly and harmless as doves or as lambs, Those lovely, sweet, innocent creatures." We all remember Dr Watts' lines on "the little busy bee." Whether he thereby made the bee attractive or instructive in any desirable sense to the child may well be doubted. * In this connection we may note that Dr Arnold, appointed Headmaster of Rugby in 1827, writing in 1830 to a friend owns himself amazed, bewildered and depressed by the deep roots which sin struck in the hearts of the very youngest of his boys: boys in his day (he died in 1842) went to Rugby when between 7 and 8 years old. Observe the uncompromising word sin: not temperament, or impulse, or inherited tendency: none of our temporising, picturesque vagueness: but sin-and nothing short of it. shivering children who exhibit the greatest interest-but still implore to be taken away. "We will go immediately," said Mr Fairchild, "but I wish first to point out to you my dear children that these brothers, when they first began to quarrel in their play, as you did this morning, did not think that death, and perhaps hell, would be the end of their quarrels. Our hearts by nature, my dear children," continued Mr Fairchild, "are full of hatred." And so on, till after a self-complacent account of his own new heart, Mr Fairchild ceases and Lucy (age 9) suggests a prayer. "Willingly, my child," said Mr Fairchild. So he knelt upon the grass, and his children around him; and they afterwards all went home'.' Mrs Sherwood was an indefatigable writer for children and her books may be fairly taken to contain the ideas current in middle class society as to child nature and child intelligence. Habits of introspection and self-examination were fostered, as the following extract will show. Lucy Fairchild's Journal, written when she was 9 years and a half old. "When I woke this morning, mama called me to make my bed; and I felt cross and wished I was like Miss Augusta Noble, and had servants to wait on me; and that Lady Noble was my mama and not my own dear mama. Mama gave Emily a bit of muslin and some pink ribbon; and I was envious and hated Emily for a little while though I knew it was wicked. When Papa gave Henry the strawberry, I was angry again: and then I thought of Mrs Giles who loves one of her little girls and hates the other. I thought that my Papa and Mama were like Mrs Giles and that they loved Henry and Emily more than me. When papa was reading and praying I wanted to be at play: and was tired of the Bible and did not wish to hear it. And then I thought a very bad thought indeed! When Mrs Barker came I despised her for not being pretty, tho' I knew that God had made her such as she is and that he could make me like her in one moment." As soon as Lucy had finished writing these words, she heard her mama come upstairs and go into her room: she immediately ran to her and 1 Fairchild Family, 19th Edition, 1853. Vol. 1. pp. 59, 60. showing her the book, "O mama, mama," she said, "you cannot think what a wicked heart I have got! Here is my journal; I am ashamed to show it to you: pray do not hate me for what is written in that book." (Mrs Fairchild replies suitably.) Then Mrs Fairchild gave the book back to Lucy and told her to continue every day to keep an account of what passed in her heart, that she might learn more and more to know and hate her own sinful nature. After this Mrs Fairchild and Lucy knelt down and confessed before God the exceeding vileness of their hearts as follows. (Here follows a prayer entitled, 'Confession of the exceeding vileness of our hearts.') One of my correspondents in writing of this book says: "The Fairchild Family used to send me to bed when I was a little child, to dream of an angry God and a torturing hell before I knew what wickedness was." A loving and gentle father told his only child, a contemporary and friend of my own, that he clearly remembered that at the age of six or so (which would take us back to about 1815) he used to contemplate his arms and legs and reflect on the probability of their burning in hell'. So late as the year 1868 his daughter remembers hearing him exhort his Infant School children (he was a Scotch minister) to do the same. This sort of teaching, with the unlimited and indiscriminate reading of the Bible, no doubt strongly influenced children of an imaginative or sensitive turn. In a booklet, published privately in 1881 and entitled The Little Girls of Fifty Years Ago, we have a record of an English child between 1820 and 1830. In this booklet reference is made to a conscientious father who forces himself to take his little girl to see a criminal hung as a lesson against crime in general. The child fainted and suffered acutely from the experience. We may thus infer that the example of Mr Fairchild and the teaching of Dr Watts bore fruit of a bitter kind for children. What strikes one, indeed, in the first fifty years of the century, 1 Cp. Calvin's vision of children in hell a span long. is the place which, educationally, fear held. The Scotch minister already mentioned used to quote, in proof of his baby daughter's sensitive conscience, how that he had found her, at the age of two and a half, sitting in the middle of the room "in an agony-but a perfect agony of conscience" because she had thoughtlessly run near a window which she had been forbidden to approach. From whatever cause, we of to-day have to deal with a race of practically fearless infants, fearless, that is, in the sense of having few or no terrifying illusions. An infant between three and four years old in an elementary school in London recently gave it as his opinion that "bogies were things to frighten kids with." This attitude towards the unknown has, I believe, in very large part superseded that of Charles Lamb towards "Witches and other night fears." With all these terrors awaiting wrong-doing, it must be owned that children of the Fairchild type were, when once they began a downward course, naughty in no temperate measure. Here is an abstract of a right royal day of childish wrong-doing as they conceived it. The record is made the more complete when we remember that the parents had been obliged to leave home for the day, and consequently the children were doubly naughty in being naughty. I. They over-ate themselves at breakfast with buttered toast, after having played in their bedrooms and neither washed their faces, combed their hair, or prayed. 2. They began to learn lessons, but had eaten too much to do so. They quarrelled. 3. A little pig was seen in the garden. 4. They chased it over a spring and got up to their knees in mud. 5. They ran on to a farm kept by Mr and Mrs Freeman, with whom they were forbidden to associate. 6. Mrs F. saw them, brought them in, and dried their clothes. 7. Mrs F., finding them unwilling to stay all day and play with her children, gave them cake and cider. 8. They all became tipsy and fell down in the lane: their heads ached, and they sat down by the road and there John found them. 9. They told lies as to where they had been, and were locked in their playroom till dinner. 10. They made good resolutions. 11. They dined on apple dumplings, and were then told to play in the barn and not to leave it till supper. 12. They spied a forbidden swing tied up, and loosed it, Henry tearing his coat as he did so. 13. Emily, insisting on being swung higher and higher, fell out and bled from mouth and nose. 14. John to the rescue. Emily's nose, eye and lip were swelled and two of her teeth were out. 15. John tied Lucy and Henry with his blue pockethandkerchief to the kitchen table, and placed Emily in a little chair by the kitchen fire. 16. They remained so till nearly dark, when the parents returned, and Lucy fell on her knees and confessed. The history of Sandford and Merton by Thomas Day cannot be passed over in silence. The author was an ardent admirer of Rousseau's Emile, and his book, published in 1783, ran through many editions. I have been using the 9th, published in 1801. It is "a work intended for the use of children," and follows the simple idea of establishing a strong contrast in health, happiness and intelligence between the rich man's family and that of the farmer. The rich man's son Tommy and the farmer's son Harry are confided to the care of Mr Barlow, the neighbouring clergyman, who declines to receive any money for his services. The teaching he gives is, entirely à la Rousseau, science, and moral precepts. The result is that Tommy, the rich boy, doffs his best shoe-buckles, combs the powder from his hair, forswears his curls, and informs his mother that "from this time I shall apply myself to the study of nothing but reason and philosophy: and therefore I have |