20 MORE POT-POURRI 



on this subject: 'I think that, allowing for hereditary- 

 instincts and inherited character, or want of it, there can 

 be no hard-and-fast rule as to allowing girl children to 

 read without restriction. So much allowance must be 

 made for the enormous difference in children, who are, 

 quite unconsciously to themselves, swayed by tempera- 

 ment or feelings the real nature of which they are 

 ignorant and innocent of. This question opens up a 

 very wide field, and perhaps in your book you could only 

 afford space for generalisation on such a subject. I also 

 feel that children, like older people and plants and any 

 living thing, are subject to the eternal and terrible order 

 of change; have phases during which their whole nature 

 may become either lethargic and indifferent, or, on the 

 other hand, be dominated by sexual feeling, receptive or 

 otherwise. One girl at the budding period feels and sees 

 nothing harmful to her mind and morals ; while another, 

 hitherto pure and simple-minded, may have her imagina- 

 tion stimulated and her morbid curiosity partially grati- 

 fied by access to all and any kind of reading, and this 

 may have the effect of soiling a mind in the first and 

 most delicate stage of development. Children, too, are 

 extraordinarily unexpected in their phases, and often 

 turn out so much better or worse than one thought with- 

 out any apparent reason.' As regards the reading, in 

 spite of aU that has been said, I cannot alter my view 

 that, on the whole, it is better to leave a great deal of 

 liberty from childhood upwards, allowing the child to 

 form her own taste, it being better to manage the read- 

 ing of the young by advice than by restrictions. 



September 3rd. — A few days ago I returned home, 

 after being abroad and away from my garden for over 

 three months. I left towards the end of May, when all 

 was fresh and green, bursting with bud and life, and full 

 of the promise of the coming summer. In three months 



