or paper shall be read without parental per mission. The father co-operates, and leaves his office, counting-room, or study, to spend his evenings with his family, and at such times the carefully-selected works of fiction are read aloud for common entertainment. Thus the parents and children are united in their pleasures, while parents have an opportunity to counteract any bad influence that might otherwise be exerted.

In the second place, teachers of schools and officers of all institutions for educating the young, could make it a definite object to instruct those under their care in the dangers to which they are exposed, and to point out the works that should be avoided, and those which may safely be read.

In the third place, the editors of our magazines and newspapers might exert a most healthful influence in presenting appropriately to the minds of their readers the dangers and evils involved in the promiscuous reading of works of imagination, in drawing attention to works that are safe and valuable, and in giving warning whenever

a work issues from the press that is pernicious in its tendencies.

Lastly, the ministers of religion may, in their pulpit discourses, instruct their people in their duties as individuals and as parents on this subject. They can most appropri ately point out how intimately the proper control and training of the imagination is connected with all devotional and practical duties-how much the power of regulating this unruly principle depends on the course of reading adopted-how much the tastes and principles of the young are modified by works of imagination-how responsible parents, and teachers, and guardians are for the proper protection of the young from these insidious and multiplying dangers-and how proper domestic regulations may avail to secure all desirable advantages without the attending evils.

If these fountains of influence would thus exert even a small moiety of their power for the public safety, the baleful missives that are now spreading poison with every breeze would soon be supplanted by those verdant leaves that bloom by the waters of life, and

are shed abroad "for the healing of the nations."

When this is attempted, those who cater for the public taste will find it for their interest to select only the safe and good. And then, too, genius will no longer debase itself in providing aliment for a vicious public taste, but, pluming its wings for a nobler flight, will roam through celestial regions, combining only the bright, the elevated, the right and pure, and thus "allure to brighter worlds, and lead the way."

Such considerations have inspired the conviction that a person who has the taste, invention, sprightliness, humour, and command of diction that qualifies for a successful novelist, by employing these talents appropriately, may become one of the greatest of public benefactors, by skilfully providing the healthful aliment that may be employed in supplanting the pernicious leaven.

Whether the writer of these sketches has the qualifications that warrant her to aim at any such effort, the public can more fairly

judge, than one who must be biased, not only by the partialities of a sister, but by the deep interest felt in the nascent efforts of a mind trained from childhood under her

care.

CATHARINE E. BEECHER