Definition of "catechisms"

"Thank goodness, I am not a child," said Lady Mandeville, turning over a collection of those juvenile tomes, which are to make the rising generation so much wiser than their grandfathers or grandmothers—catechisms of conchology, geology, mathematical questions for infants, geography, astronomy; "the child may be 'father to the man;' but the said father must have had some trouble with his offspring."

1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter VI, in Romance and Reality. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], page 94