Frank’s doings and his sayings are a model of simplicity; but nobody could say of him what Charles Lamb said of Mrs. Barbauld’s little boys. As surely as any critic is disposed to laugh at Frank, he finds himself watching with involuntary interest while Frank pulls the leg of the table, and finds out what would have happened to the tea-cups if he had not been such “an obedient little boy”. His adventures, moreover, are not all among the tea-cups. He is interested in a carpenter and in kites, and he has a more than usually good eye for a horse. What really distresses the reader is that he is never allowed out of school; his most casual experience contributes to his mental and moral advancement. Chestnuts, glow-worms, the flame of a candle and other enchanting things are impounded for object lessons. Frank’s father and mother are his tutor and governess; the only poetry they mete out to him comes from Dr. Darwin’s _Botanic Garden_[160], and is “correlated” to Natural History; and after that it has to be explained. For when Dr. Darwin sings of a moth’s “trunk”, little Frank understands by that “a sort of box”; when his mother repeats: