English literature itself fosters this independent spirit of criticism by its extraordinary abundance, its own wide liberty of spirit, its surpassing truthfulness.

Our greatest poets and our truest do not sing to an audience but to their Maker and to His world, and let anyone who can understand it catch the song, and sing it after them.

No doubt many have fallen from the truth and piped an artificial tune, and they have had their following.

But love for the real and true is very deep and in the end it prevails, and as far as we can obtain it with children it must prevail.
Their first acquaintance with beautiful things is best established by reading aloud to them, and this need not be limited entirely to what they can understand at the time.

Even if we read something that is beyond them, they have listened to the cadences, they have heard the song without the words, the words will come to them later.