It may be doubted whether the famous _Hymns in Prose_[124] ever appealed to children as it did to their parents. Mrs. Barbauld entirely disagreed with Rousseau’s principle that there should be no religious teaching in early life, and that a young child cannot appreciate natural beauties; but she also rejected Paley’s crude idea of the Creator as a sort of Divine Mechanic,[125] which some writers preferred to the neutral deism of Rousseau.