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THE EDUCATIONAL POWER OF FICTION.
presents to mankind some ideal from its master's mind. While the picture or the image leaves but a single impression, the language of the imagination is a constant movement, showing objects in all their relation. Of these three productions the latter should be ranked highest in the order of genius. The fictionist must be artist, poet, philosopher and teacher. Theoretically, his compass is wide as life itself. Out of character and incident he forms the most effective product by which the imagination communicates with the world; and while he should not write with a definite didactic aim, he may exert an influence most elevating or degrading in its energy.
The love of fiction is instinctive. Among no class of persons is this style of writing read with greater ardor than among children, and none are more susceptible to its fascination. The delight of a child is to get a story-book, and ensconced in some safe retreat, to devour its contents. It matters little whether the story be of a high or a low quality, so that it is exciting. With feverish interest the fortune of each hero is followed until the last page is finished. Every character seems a living being, entrancing the young admirer. This inordinate fondness for what is termed "light" literature is contemplated with the greatest anxiety by strict and scrupulous parents. Oftentimes the child is cut off entirely from this source of gratification, O, misguided parent! If your purpose be to cure the passion you deprecate, your artifice is ill advised. Instead of abating the desire, you have adopted the most effectual means of augmenting it. More sagacious by far, is he who discerns herein one of the principal avenues leading from the external world to the innermost precincts of the soul, and instead of erecting carriers to fence out the delineations of nature, would so devise that only the pure
might seek admission. Are we to suppose, forsooth, that there is a single propensity in the human mind that is implanted in vain, that is not right in the inception? Then how very irrational—how strangely inconsistent with the recognized educational maxims of the day, the procedure that would crush out those inborn inclinations, rather than make them available as a means of mental development.
Life is rarely seen in the picturesque or ideal aspects-by children almost never. The busy events of every day are too often calculated to engender selfishness, rather than inspire ambition for the good and elevating. It is to the higher and more refined sentiments that the work of fiction ministers. From this standpoint, its intrinsic value is not generally appreciated. To almost every child,the novel,if of the better kind,proves more than a fascination. It is a revelation. Life enlarges from a selfish circle to a sphere of nobleness. Sympathy and generosity are awakened. The world becomes a new creation; and the impressions thus formed are seldom effaced by time. Books which the routine of study places within the hands of youth, fail to produce such a result. However important they are in the cultivation of the mind, their influence is general,rather than limited to distinct and vivid impressions.
The educational power of fiction is not solely in cultivating the sentiments and developing new impulses. Genius needs a spark to kindle its latent forces. That imaginative literature often acts in this capacity, the autobiographies of geniuses fully testify. Scott at three years of age listened to stories of Danish conquest, and at seven had read a number of Shakespeare's plays. Wordsworth, in a poem to Coleridge, congratulates him upon their freedom in youth of "wandering through