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 the4 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 calls it forth, and of the countenance which they solicit for it.