MY TOADS. 147 



garden, a small six-year-old naturaUst, with a magnifying 

 glass always open in one hand, and an empty pill-bos 

 in the other, the toad has been a great favourite with 

 me, though, perhaps, considering the rude handling to 

 which it was continually subjected, the feeling was 

 hardly reciprocated on the part of the reptile. 



En passant, let me speak in the highest terms of 

 the benefit conferred on children by letting them run 

 about as they will in a rough and ready kind of garden, 

 where they may work their own sweet wills, dig, plant, 

 sow, build, and play just as they like, without being 

 subjected to the annoyance of being confined to the 

 gravel, and forbidden under severe penalties to place a 

 foot on the beds. It is an education in itself to them, 

 this wild fireedom. They learn a thousand things that 

 books will never teach them ; the use of their limbs, the 

 use of their eyes, readiness of resource, and quick ap- 

 preciation. They are sure to realise in vivid action every 

 event of which they hear or read, and thus indelibly fix 

 their knowledge on their childish memory. 



For my own part I know that there was not an 

 event in Eobinson Crusoe, the Swiss Family Robinson, 

 Persian Fables, or Arabian Nights, that we did not act 

 over and over again ; while the histories of England, 

 Greece, and Rome were delineated with equal force. 



Not only were we wrecked on desert islands — ^not 

 only did we rescue Men Fridays (darkening our faces 

 with black-lead, in order to represent the suave savage 

 in * character ') — not only did we build ' falcons' nests ' 



