Great Thoughts for Little Thinkers. By Lucia T. Ames. (G.
P. Putn.am's Sons.)—This may be described, though the descrip-
tion does not pretend to be exact, as a sort of cosmogony and universal history put into language that children would under- stand. The author does not lack courage. She tells her readers, for instance, boldly that there is no such being as the Devil. She should tell them that the New Testament writers thought other- wise, and that she has no special illumination of her own. The history is fairly well done. Perhaps we may be allowed to question an arrangement, on what is called "The Chart of the Ages," which seems to make "railroads, telegraphs, stoves, gas, matches, sewing- machines, steamboats, steel pens, and spring-beds" the outcome of all the ages. The little folk might have been told of these in- ventions; but they are only too apt to think that these advances in material well-being represent the progress of humanity.
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