3UVENILE BOOKS.

IT has perhaps been said before, but we will risk the repetition, that not only have the juvenile books of the present day greatly improved upon their predecessors, but, taking them altogether, their excellence is amongst the highest in kind of any literature of the time. Can it be that the human mind is expanding earlier than in former ages ? Or is the title of children's books a mere ruse to cover a smuggling trade ? and do grown-up persons, and Dot injudiciously, solace themselves with works that they no- minally purchase for "the young folks?" Be this as it may, there is a fulness of matter, a closeness of style, a freshness and truth of character, a tone of reasoning, and even a philosophy of view, about the best of the juvenile publications, which are not to be found in many books of higher price and greater pretensions ; whilst those of a confessedly humbler order are frequently distinguished by such of these qualities as are necessary for the peculiar end in view. Here is a list of half-a-dozen publications, several of which, independent of their general merits, have a leading object and a distinct character—a literary idiosyncracy, if such an ex- pression be admissible.

The Art of Being Happy. Social Tales for the Young. Tales that Might be True. Exercises for the Improvement of the Senses. The Scripture Teacher's Assistant. Le Nouveau Testament.

The first volume in this table will illustrate the observations just

made. The Art of Being Happy is chiefly taken from the French of M. Dnoz : it is an attempt to show that bliss may be made the subject of rules, and that although physical and moral evils are inseparable from our mundane state, yet that most of us might be happier than we are if we were early taught to try and -.obtain happiness, and if we seconded the instructions of our teachers by our own eflbrts. Here is a subject for investigation, in comparison with which treatises de (2,fficiis shrink to the con- dition of subordinate parts. It is enough for the glory, though not for the comfort of the present age, to have suggested the in- quiry : when we remember the time which mere physical arts have taken to reach perfection, it were too much to expect that such a science should be at once completed. Nor is it. Neither M. DROZ nor his follower, Mr. HALL DRAPER, lays down dis- tinct rules for the attainment of happiness; but running over such subjects as physical, organic, and moral laws, the general nature of happiness, our desires, our relations to others,—as in marriage and friendship, the pleasures of the senses, the heart, and the understanding, the circumstances of our social condition, the rapidity of life and death itself,--they throw out suggestions upon each which the philosopher may improve and the practitioner apply—if be con. But if the Art of Being Happy cannot make us permanently so, its perusal will please us for a few hours ; for the spirit and animation of the original has lost little or nothing by its transference to English, although its adaptation to children seems not so clear. Young folks, indeed, may comprehend such passages as the following, but can they appreciate them? In the Arst, it will be seen, the writer has been speaking of those who not only live by chance, but defend their doing so.

Such is the practical creed of the great mass of society.. I, on the contrary, think that this general persuasion is palpably false and fatal ; that much suf- fering. may be avoided and much enjoyment obtained by following rules and pursuing happiness by system ; that 1 have had the fortune to meet with num- ,bera who were demonstrative proof that men may learn how to be happy. I .am confident that the far greater portion of human suffering is of our own pro- curing,—the result of ignorance and mistaken views, and that it is superfluous and unnecessary mixture of bitterness in the cup of human Pie. I firmly be- have that the greater number of deaths, instead of being the result of specific • diseases, to which they are attributed, are really caused by a series of impercep- tible malign influences, springing from corroding cares, griefs, and disappoint. meats. 'To say that more than half the human race die of sorrow and a broken heart, or in some way fall victims to their depraved passions, may seem like advancing a revolting doctrine ; but it is, nevertheless, a simple truth. We do not actually see the operations of grief upon some one or all the count- has frail and delicate constituents of human life. But if physiology could look through the infinitely complicated web of our structure with the power of the solar microscope, it would behold every chagrin searing some nerve, paralyzing the action of some organ, or closing some capillary, and that every sigh draws its drop of life-blood from the heart. Nature is slow in resenting her injuries ; but the memory of them is indelibly impressed and treasured up for a late but ceitain revenge. Nervousness, lowness of spirits, headache, and all the count- bas train of morbid and deranged corporeal and mental action, are at once

the cause and the effect of sorrow and anxiety, increased by a constant series of action and reaction. Thought and care become impressed upon the brow. The bland essence of cheerfulness evaporates. The head becomes shorn of its locks, and the frosts of winter gather on the temples. These concurrent influ- ences silently. sap the stamina of life; until, aided bysome adventitious circum- stance, death lays his hand upon the frame that by the sorrows and cares of life was prepared for his dread office. The bills of mortality assign a name to the mortal disease different from the true one.

DURATION AND UTILITY OF WISDOM.

To encourage Us to shake off the superineumbent load of indifference, ridi- cule, and oppobition, and to make efforts to extend virtue and happiness, let us reflect that a useful thought may outlive an empire. Babylon and Thebes are now nowhere to be found ; but the moral lessons of the contemporary wise and good, ■despised and disregarded, perhaps, in their day, have descended to us, and are still to be found. As the seminal principles of plants, borne through the wide spaces of the air by their downy wings, find at length a congenial spot in

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wich to settle down and vegetate, these seeds of virtue and happiness, floating down the current of time, are still arrested from age to age by some kindred mind, in which they germinate and produce their golden fruit. No intellect can conjecture in how niany instances, and to what degree, every fit moral pre- cept may have conic between the reason and passions of some one, balancing between the course of happiness and ruin, and may have inclined the scale in his favour. The consciousness of even an effiirt to achieve one such triumph is a sufficient satisfaction to a virtuous mind.

MARRIAGE AS IT MOSTLY Is.

There can be no doubt that the common views of the universal unhappiness of the wedded state, in all Christian countries, are the result of gross exaggera- tion. But, making all allowances for errors from this source, language is too feeble to delineate the countless and unutterable miseries that, in all time since the institution of marriage, as recognized by Christianity, have resulted from these incompatible unions ; for the simple reason that, in this transaction, of so much more moment than almost any other, scarcely one of the parties in a thousand, it is believed, takes the least note of it in relation to the organic and moral laws. Tile young and the aged, the feeble and the strong, the healthy and the diseased, the beautiful and the deformed, the mild and the fierce, the intellectual and the purely animal, the rich and the poor, bring their incompa- tibilities to a common stuck, add ruinous excesses of temperament together, aid arouse front a short trance to the conscious and sober sadness of waking misery. Weariness and discontent, relieved only by domestic discord, and a wretchedness aggravated by the consciousness that there is no escape from it but by death, is the issue of a union consummated under illusive expectations of more than mortal happiness. What multitudes have found this to be the reality of their youthful dreams! Yet, if this most important union is contracted under animal impulses, without any regard to moral and intellectual considerations, without any investigation of the organic and social fitness of the case, without inquiry into the couipatibility, without a mutual understanding of dispositions and habits, who cannot foresee that the affections will soon languish in satiety; that repentance, disaffection, and even loathing, in proportion to the remem- bered raptures for ever passed away, will open the eyes of the parties to their real and permanent condition, and that by a law as certain and inevitable as that which }impels water down a precipice ! And this is not the darkest shade in the picture. By the same laws children are born, who advance into life to repeat the errors of their parents, to make conmion stock of their misery anew, to multiply the number of the unhappy.

Mrs. Snsawoon's Social Tales is more limited in its view, although the lady herself will demur to this opinion. The lead- ing purpose of the volume is to inculcate justification by faith, or at least to show the vital importance of Christianity in all stations and conditions ; but there are a variety of minor moral lessons enforced throughout the work—as the superiority of old-fashioned discipline in bringing up children, and the futility of all grand schemes of social improvement. The stories, in which the lady developes her opinions, are ten in number ; distinguished by the shrewd observation that characterizes Mrs. SHERWOOD, but some- what injured in their effect, as tales, by the frequent intrusion of the moralist and theologian. Tales that Might be True are addressed to a more juvenile class of readers, and do not display so much of thought as the pre- ceding work ; but as the moral purpose is more blended with the characters and the conduct of the stories, they are more interest- ing in themselves and perhaps more conducive to the end in view, from the absence of apparent design. The number of these tales is four; of which "Blue Socks" is the best : it is a very clever skit upon very young literary ladies, who skim over profound works without understanding them, and admire to excite admi- ration.

It has been doubted, and perhaps it is a point which fairly admits of doubt, whether the mechanical facilities for disseminating books has not been injurious to sound acquirement, by substituting a knowledge of words for things—of the sign for the thing signi- fied. It has not, perhaps, been the aim of Exercises for the Improvement of the Senses to attempt any remedy for this, even in relation to the limited subject of the work ; yet, in the hands of a skilful and patient teacher, it will do something towards finding one, as far as relates to those common objects with which children mus of necessity come into contact, though they may be familiar with them for years without acquiring any definite ideas respecting their uses. The plan of the work is, by brief questions upon all the simple matters of daily occurrence, to excite in the child habits of reflection and observation ; beginning with the commonest points of the commonest objects, and gradually proceeding up to such as may be made to illustrate parts of natural philosophy. The dith- culty, as regards the general use of the work, lies in the .constant tie which it must entail upon the teacher : its defect is an oc- casional exposition of very trivial things as if they were oracular revelations. The three first of the above-named works are distinguished for the beauty of their getting-up, and the last for its neatness. The Scripture Teacher's Assistant is of a plainer kind, as it was origi- nally designed for Sunday schools and scholars of an humbler class. Like Exercises of the Senses, it proposes to teach a little at a time, but to teach that thoroughly. The subject of the book is the Life of Christ : it is divided into fifty-two lessons, one for

every Sunday; and these are made to comprise the leading events of our Saviour's biography, from the Nativity to the Ascension. Each lesson consists of a selection from the Gospels; and to it are appended interpretations of the more difficult words and phrases, explanations of custon s, geographical information, and commen- taries upon the religious lessons which each section conveys. It is altogether a good design well executed ; and, though intended for class teaching, is equally adapted to single pupils.

We have classed Le Nouveau Testament with juvenile books, not for its subject, but for its size, which is adapted to the fingers, as its type is to the eyes, of the young. A prettier present to the little French student we can hardly i :unglue than this tiny edition of the French Testament. It is also admirably fitted to be a rocket companion for any one of larger growth who is studying the language. Its close resemblance to the English version renders it one of the most intelligible of books, and more capable of being construed without the usual appliances than any other, whilst its bulk is so trivial as to be no incumbranee. It might be carried in a glove, or, as was laxly said of Mr. PICKERING'S Diamond edition, " It lieth in the waistcoat-pocket and swelleth it not."