"The time is out of joint; oh, cursed spite!
That ever I was born to set it right!"
cries Hamlet wearily; but it is at thirty, and not at thirteen, that he makes this unpleasant discovery.
In religious stories, of which there are many hundreds published every year, these peculiar views are even more defined, presenting themselves often in the form of a spiritual contest between highly endowed, sensitive children and their narrow-minded parents and guardians, who, of course, are always in the wrong. The clever authoress of Thrown Together is by no means innocent of this unwholesome tone; but the chief offender, and one who has had a host of dismal imitators, is Susan Warner,—Miss Wetherell,—who plainly considered that virtue, especially in the young, was of no avail unless constantly undergoing persecution. Her supernaturally righteous little girls, who pin notes on their fathers' dressing-tables, requesting them to become Christians, and who endure the most brutal treatment—at their parents' hands—rather than sing songs on Sunday evening, are equaled only by her older heroines, who divide their time im-
