The woodcuts are not the least interesting feature of this old-time duodecimo, from the picture showing the mother reading to her children to the illustration of the quaking of the earth on the day of the crucifixion.  Crude and badly drawn as they now seem, they were surely sufficient to attract the child of their generation.

About the same time old Zechariah Fowle, who apprenticed Isaiah Thomas, and both printed and vended chap-books in Back Street, Boston, advertised among his list of books “Lately Publish’d” this same small book, together with “A Token for Youth,” the “Life and Death of Elizabeth Butcher,” “A Preservative from the Sins and Follies of Childhood and Youth,” “The Prodigal Daughter,” “The Happy Child,” and “The New Gift for Children with Cuts.”  Of these “The New Gift” was certainly a real story-book, as one of a later edition still extant readily proves.

Thus the children in both countries were prepared to enjoy Newbery’s miniature story-books, although for somewhat different reasons:  in England the literature had reached a point too artificial to be interesting to little ones; in America the product of the press and the character of the majority of the juvenile importations, the reprints, or home-made chap-books, has been shown to be such as would hardly attract those who were to be the future arbiters of the colonies’ destiny.

The reasons for the coming to light of this new form of infant literature have been dwelt upon in order to show the necessity for some change in the kind of reading-matter to be put in the hands of the younger members of the family.  The natural order of consideration is next to point out the phase it assumed upon its appearance in England,—­a phase largely due to the influence of one man,—­and once there, the modifications effected by the fashions in adult fiction.

Although there was already much interest in the education and welfare of children still in the nursery, the character of the first play-books was probably due to the esteem in which the opinions of the philosopher, John Locke, were held.  He it was who gradually moved the vane of public opinion around to serious consideration of recreation as a factor in the well-being of these nursery inmates.  Although it took time for Locke’s ideas upon the subject to sink into the public mind, it is impossible to compare one of the first attempts to produce a play-book, “The Child’s New Play-thing,” with the advice written to his friend, Edward Clarke, without feeling that the progress from the religious books to primers and readers (such as “Dilworth’s Guide"), and then onward to story-books, was largely the result of the publication of his letters under the title of “Thoughts on Education.”