“Everything went on with great harmony till they came to the head-dress of the doll; and here they differed so much in opinion, that all their little clappers were going at once....  Luckily, at this instant Mrs. Amiable happened to come in, and soon brought the little gossips to order.  The matter in dispute was, whether it should have a high head-dress or whether the hair should come down on the forehead, and the curls flow in natural ringlets on the shoulders.  However, after some pretty warm debate, this last mode was adopted, as most proper for a little miss.”  In chapter third “The doll is named:—­Accidents attend the Ceremony.”  Here we have a picture of a children’s party.  “The young ladies and gentlemen were entertained with tea and coffee; and when that was over, each was presented with a glass of raisin wine.”  During the christening ceremony an accident happened to the doll, because Master Tommy, the parson, “in endeavouring to get rid of it before the little gossips were ready to receive it, made a sad blunder....  Miss Polly, with tears in her eyes, snatched up the doll and clasped it to her bosom; while the rest of the little gossips turned all the little masters out of the room, that they might be left to themselves to inquire more privately into what injuries the dear doll had received....  Amidst these alarming considerations Tommy Amiable sent the ladies word, that, if they would permit him and the rest of the young gentlemen to pass the evening among them in the parlour, he would engage to replace the nose of the doll in such a manner that not the appearance of the late accident should be seen.”  Permission was accordingly granted for a surgical operation upon the nose, but “as to the fracture in one of the doll’s legs, it was never certainly known how that was remedied, as the young ladies thought it very indelicate to mention anything about the matter.”  The misadventures of the doll include its theft by a monkey in the West Indies, and at this interesting point the only available copy of the tale is cut short by the loss of the last four pages.  The charm of this book lies largely in the fact that the owner of the doll does not grow up and marry as in almost every other novelette.  This difference, of course, prevents the story from being a typical one of its period, but it is, nevertheless, a worthy forerunner of those tales of the nineteenth century in which an effort was made to write about incidents in a child’s life, and to avoid the biographical tendency.

Before leaving the books of the eighteenth century, one tale must be mentioned because it contains the germ of the idea which has developed into Mr. George’s “Junior Republic.”  It was called “Juvenile Trials for Robbing Orchards, Telling Tales and other Heinous Offenses.”  “This,” said Dr. Aikin—­Mrs. Barbauld’s brother and collaborator in “Evenings at Home”—­“is a very pleasing and ingenious little Work, in which a Court of Justice is supposed to be instituted in