If adults are disposed to doubt their own decreasing significance, and the increasing ascendency of children, they may learn a lesson in humility from the popular literature of the day, as well as from social and domestic life. The older novelists were so little impressed by the ethical or artistic consequence of childhood that they gave it scant notice in their pages. Scott, save for a few passages here and there, as in “The Abbot” and “Peveril of the Peak,” ignores it altogether. Miss Austen is reticent on the subject, and, when she does speak, manifests a painful lack of enthusiasm. Mary Musgrave’s troublesome little boys and Lady Middleton’s troublesome little girl seem to be introduced for no other purpose than to show how tiresome and exasperating they ............