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CONTENTS
LIST OF DESIGNS

-v-

THE author has long been of opinion that many of the classical mythswere capable of being rendered into very capital reading for children.In the little volume here offered to the public, he has worked up halfa dozen of them, with this end in view. A great freedom of treatmentwas necessary to his plan; but it will be observed by every one whoattempts to render these legends malleable in his intellectualfurnace, that they are marvellously independent of all temporary modesand circumstances. They remain essentially the same, after changesthat would affect the identity of almost anything else.

He does not, therefore, plead guilty to a sacrilege, in havingsometimes shaped anew, as his fancy dictated, the forms that have beenhallowed by an antiquity of two or three thousand years. No epoch oftime can claim a copyright in these immortal fables. They seem neverto have been made; and certainly, so long as man exists, they cannever perish; but, by their indestructibility itself, they arelegitimate subjects for every age to clothe with its own garniture ofmanners and sentiment, and to imbue with its own morality. In...