having ears to hear we would hear. "Our youth should be educated in a
stricter rule from the first, for if education becomes lawless and
the youths themselves become lawless, they can never grow up into
well-conducted or meritorious citizens; and _the education must begin
with their plays_."

We talk a great deal about the strength of early impressions. I wonder
if we mean all we say; we do not live up to it, at all events. "In
childish play deep meaning lies." "The hand that rocks the cradle is
the hand that rules the world." "Give me the first six years of a
child's life, and I care not who has the rest." "The child of six
years has learned already far more than a student learns in his entire
university course." "The first six years are as full of advancement as
the six days of creation," and so on. If we did believe these things
fully, we should begin education with conscious intelligence at the
cradle, if not earlier. The great German dramatic critic, Schlegel,
once sneered at the brothers Jacob and William Grimm, for what he
styled their "meditation on the insignificant." These two brothers,
says a wiser student, an historian of German literature, were animated
by a "pathetic optimism, and possessed that sober imagination which
delights in small things and narrow interests, lingering over them
with strong affection." They explored villages and hamlets for obscure
legends and folk tales, for nursery songs, even; and bringing to bear
on such things at once a human affection and a wise scholarship, their
meditation on the insignificant became the basis of their scientific
greatness and the source of their popularity. Every child has read
some of Grimm's household tales, "The Frog Prince," "Hans in Luck,"
or the "Two Brothers;" but comparatively few people realize, perhaps,
that this collection of stories is the foundation of the modern
science of folk-lore, and a by-play in researches of philology and