In the beginning they are, to children, only stories, but we know ourselves that we can never exhaust the value of what came to us through the story of the wanderings of Ulysses, or the mysterious beauty of the Northern and Western myths, as the story of Balder or the children of Lir.

The art of telling stories is beginning to be taught with wonderful power and beauty, the storyteller is turning into the pioneer of the historian, coming in advance to occupy the land, so that history may have "staked out a claim" before the examining bodies can arrive, in the dry season, to tread down the young growth.
The second period makes appeal to the intelligence, as well as to the imagination, and to this stage belongs particularly the study of the national history, the history of their own race and country; for English girls the history of England, not yet constitutional history, but the history of the Constitution with that of the kings and people, and further the history of the Empire.

To this period of education belong the great lessons of loyalty and patriotism, that piety towards our own country which is so much on the decline as the home tie grows feebler.
We do not want to teach the narrow patriotism which only finds expression in antagonism to and disparagement of other countries, but that which is shown by self-denial and self-sacrifice for the good of our own.

The time to teach it is in that unsettled "middle age" of childhood when its exuberant feeling is in search of an ideal, when large moral effects can be appreciated, when there is some opening understanding of the value of character.
If the first period of childhood delights in what is strange, this second period gives its allegiance to what is strong, by preference to primitive and simple strength, to uncomplex aims and marked characters; it appreciates courage and endurance, and can bear to hear of sufferings which daunt the fastidiousness of those who are a few years older; perhaps it can endure so much because it realizes so little, but the fact remains true.

This age exults in the sufferings of the martyrs and cannot bear the suggestion that plain duties may be heroic before God.
There is a great deal that may be done for minds in this period of development by the teaching of history if it is not crippled in its programme.