BOY'S AND GIRL'S LIBRARY.
—
PROSPECTUS.
The publishers of the “Boy's and Girl's Library”
propose, under this title, to issue a series
of cheap but attractive volumes, designed especially
for the young. The undertaking originates
not in the impression that there does not already
exist in the treasures of the reading world a large
provision for this class of the community. They are
fully aware of the deep interest excited at the present
day on the subject of the mental and moral training
of the young, and of the amount of talent and labour
bestowed upon the production of works aiming
both at the solid culture and the innocent entertainment
of the inquisitive minds of children. They
would not therefore have their projected enterprise
construed into an implication of the slightest disparagement
of the merits of their predecessors in the
same department. Indeed it is to the fact of the
growing abundance rather than to the scarcity of
useful productions of this description that the design
of the present work is to be traced; as they
are desirous of creating a channel through which
the products of the many able pens enlisted in the
service of the young may be advantageously conveyed
to the public.
The contemplated course of publications will
more especially embrace such works as are adapted,
not to the extremes of early childhood or of
advanced youth, but to that intermediate space
which lies between childhood and the opening of
maturity. when the trifles of the nursery and the
simple lessons of the school-room have ceased to
exercise their beneficial influence, but before the
taste for a higher order of mental pleasure has established
a fixed ascendency in their stead. In the
selection of works intended for the rising generation
in this plastic period of their existence, when
the elements of future character are receiving their
moulding impress, the publishers pledge themselves
that the utmost care and scrupulosity shall be exercised.
They are fixed in their determination that
nothing of a questionable tendency on the score of
sentiment shall find admission into pages consecrated
to the holy purpose of instructing the thoughts,
regulating the passions, and settling the principles
of the young.
In fine, the publishers of the “Boy's and Girl's
Library” would assure the public that an adequate
patronage alone is wanting to induce and enable
them to secure the services of the most gifted pens
in our country in the proposed publication, and thus
to render it altogether worthy of the age and the
object which call it forth, and of the countenance
which they solicit for it.
