First it appears in no great harm, in architectural tastes. Out of blocks, thread-spools, cards, and checkers, he will build his pyramid with the gravity of Palladio. With an acoustic apparatus of whistle and rattle he explores the laws of sound. But chiefly, like his senior countrymen, the young American studies new and speedier modes of transportation. Mistrusting the cun- ning of his small legs, he wishes to ride on the necks and shoulders of all flesh. The small enchanter nothing can withstand, — seniority of age, no gravity of character ; uncles, aunts, grandsires, grandames, fall an easy prey : he conforms to nobody, all conform to him ; all caper, and make mouths, and babble, and chirrup to him. On the strongest shoulders he rides, and pulls the hair of laurelled heads. The chiid realizes to every man his own earliest remembrance, and so supplies a defect in our education, or enabling us to live over the unconscious history with a sympathy so tender as to be almost personal experience. The first ride into the country, the first bath in running water, the first time the skates are put on, the first game out of doors in moonlight, the books of the nursery, are chapters of joy. "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments," " Robinson Crusoe," and the "Pilgrim's Progress," — what mines of thought and emotion, what a wardrobe to dress the whole world withal, are in this encyclopaedia of young thinking! And so by beautiful traits, which, without art, yet seem the master-piece of wisdom, provoking the love that watches and educates him, the little pilgrim prosecutes the journey through nature which he has thus gayly begun. He grows up the ornament and joy of the house, which rings to his glee, to rosy boyhood. 4.3 MR. RUSKIN'S IDEAS OF A MODEL NURSERY. " A leaf, a sunbeam, a landscape, the ocean, make an analogous impression on the mind. What is common to them all, — that perfectness and harmony, is beauty. The standard of beauty is the entire circuit of natural forms, the totality of nature." — EMERSON. BECAUSE a man knows a great deal about art, literature and philosophy is no rea- son for considering him an expert in caring for babies. But still, Mr. John Ruskin's ideas of a model nursery are of interest, right or wrong, and so here they are, as given by him in a letter which has just been published in England. "I have never," he says, " written a pamphlet on nurseries; first, because I never write about anything except what I know more of than most other persons; secondly, because I think nothing much matters in a nursery — except the mother, the nurse and the air. So far as I have notion or guess in the matter myself, beyond the perfection of these three necessary elements, I should say the rougher and plainer everything the better — no lace to cradle or cap, hardest possible bed, and simplest possible food, according to age, and floor and walls of the cleanablest. All education to beauty, is, first, in the beauty of gentle human faces round a child; secondly, in the fields, fields meaning grass, water, beasts, flowers and sky. Without these no man can be educated humanly. He may be made a calculating machine, a walking dictionary, a painter of dead bodies, a twanger or scratcher on keys or catgut, a discoverer of new forms of worms in mud; but a properly so-called human being — never.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

First it appears in no great harm, in architectural tastes. Out of blocks, thread-spools, cards, and checkers, he will build his pyramid with the gravity of Palladio. With an acoustic apparatus of whistle and rattle he explores the laws of sound. But chiefly, like his senior countrymen, the young American studies new and speedier modes of transportation. Mistrusting the cunning of his small legs, he wishes to ride on the necks and shoulders of all flesh. The small enchanter nothing can withstand, — seniority of age, no gravity of character ; uncles, aunts, grandsires, grandames, fall an easy prey : he conforms to nobody, all conform to him ; all caper, and make mouths, and babble, and chirrup to him. On the strongest shoulders he rides, and pulls the hair of laurelled heads. The child realizes to every man his own earliest remembrance, and so supplies a defect in our education, or enabling us to live over the unconscious history with a sympathy so tender as to be almost personal experience. The first ride into the country, the first bath in running water, the first time the skates are put on, the first game out of doors in moonlight, the books of the nursery, are chapters of joy. "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments," " Robinson Crusoe," and the "Pilgrim's Progress," — what mines of thought and emotion, what a wardrobe to dress the whole world withal, are in this encyclopaedia of young thinking! And so by beautiful traits, which, without art, yet seem the master-piece of wisdom, provoking the love that watches and educates him, the little pilgrim prosecutes the journey through nature which he has thus gayly begun. He grows up the ornament and joy of the house, which rings to his glee, to rosy boyhood. 4.3 MR. RUSKIN'S IDEAS OF A MODEL NURSERY. " A leaf, a sunbeam, a landscape, the ocean, make an analogous impression on the mind. What is common to them all, — that perfectness and harmony, is beauty. The standard of beauty is the entire circuit of natural forms, the totality of nature." — EMERSON. BECAUSE a man knows a great deal about art, literature and philosophy is no reason for considering him an expert in caring for babies. But still, Mr. John Ruskin's ideas of a model nursery are of interest, right or wrong, and so here they are, as given by him in a letter which has just been published in England. "I have never," he says, " written a pamphlet on nurseries; first, because I never write about anything except what I know more of than most other persons; secondly, because I think nothing much matters in a nursery — except the mother, the nurse and the air. So far as I have notion or guess in the matter myself, beyond the perfection of these three necessary elements, I should say the rougher and plainer everything the better — no lace to cradle or cap, hardest possible bed, and simplest possible food, according to age, and floor and walls of the cleanablest. All education to beauty, is, first, in the beauty of gentle human faces round a child; secondly, in the fields, fields meaning grass, water, beasts, flowers and sky. Without these no man can be educated humanly. He may be made a calculating machine, a walking dictionary, a painter of dead bodies, a twanger or scratcher on keys or catgut, a discoverer of new forms of worms in mud; but a properly so-called human being — never.

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