"We are not proposing to train up poets or sentimentalists; but to replenish
the mind with bright and available materials, such as shall impart to it an
abundance of intellectual wealth, and give it breadth and elevation; and, by
these natural means, exclude whatever is frivolous, vulgar, selfish, or sensual."

LONDON:

RELFE AND FLETCHER, CORNHILL.

1839.

LONDON:

J. UNWIN, PRINTER, BUCKLERSBURY.

PREFACE.

IN the course of his experience in tuition, the Editor of this little volume has often sought in vain for a selection of poems really adapted to the requirements of Childhood-including in this term the period between six years of age and eleven or twelve. There are, indeed, many valuable works, already extant, professing to supply this want; these, however, on trial, have been found to contain but a small quantity of that sort of poetry with which children can sympathize. "The poetry which children choose," says the author of Home Education,'" is that which, with a light descriptive brevity, brings the familiar aspects of the visible world before the fancy; and that also which is simply and briskly narrative, and which is enlivened by turns of humour, and deepened by just moral sentiments, and especially by touches of pity." Such poetry has a tendency to give