Juv 1843.36

PREFACE

Ir a hearty affection for that interesting little race, the race of children, is any recommendation, the writers of the following pages are well recommended; and if in some degree to have studied their capacities, habits, and wants, with a wish to adapt these simple verses to their real comprehensions and probable improvement - if this has any further claim to the indulgence of the public, it is the last and only one they attempt to make. The deficiency of the compositions as poetry is by no means a secret to their authors; but it was thought desirable to abridge every poetic freedom and figure, and even the long-syllabled word, which might give, perhaps, a false idea to their little readers, or at least make a chasm in the chain of conception. Images, which to us are so familiar that we forget their imagery, are terrible stumbling-blocks to children, who have none but literal ideas; and though it may be allowable to introduce a simple kind, which a little maternal attention will easily explain, and which may tend to excite a taste for natural and poetic beauty, every thing superfluous it has been a primary endeavour to avoid.

To those parents into whose hands this little volume shall happen to fall, it is very respectfully inscribed; and, very affectionately, to that interesting little race-the race of children.

LITTLE Ann and her mother were walking one day,
Through London's wide city so fair;

And business obliged them to go by the way
That led them through Cavendish Square.
And as they pass'd by the great house of a lord,
A beautiful chariot came

To take some most elegant ladies abroad,
Who straightway got into the same.