210 FACT AGAINST FICTION. 



and therefore ingenious, descriptions. They are then 

 followed U23 by the ^Arabian Nights' Entertainments,' 

 and other amusingly clever and exciting fictions, 

 such as ^ Eobinson Crusoe.' All and more of these are 

 given to children, the givers quite forgetting, or, 

 perhaps, ignorant of the fact, that such literature 

 can but lead the then malleable mind into a laby- 

 rinth of erroneous conclusions, all of which will have 

 to be combated in future ; and that, as methods of 

 useful instruction, such Avorks are wholly and utterly 

 worthless,— not only worthless, but absolutely 

 wrong. 



Now, if the infant mind really is," at a very early 

 age, capable of instruction, why not amuse and 

 teach it by truth and not by fiction, and from the 

 brilliant pebbles of the earth, from the strange and 

 incontestable facts which its bosom so indisputably 

 contains, find materials wherevnth to write books, 

 and to draw pictures brighter by far than can be 

 illuminated by any '' wonderful lamp," and more 

 beautiful because of the heavenly pencil which 

 touched the plumage of the bird, gave to the wing 

 of the insect and the leaf of the rose and other 

 flowers their glorious colours, and illumined with 

 sparkling splendour and dazzling sheen, silver, gold, 



