to support a hospital for fools, than to have a parliament or a congress of knaves.

And thus it is with all moral developments. Ignorance may appeal to a wrong motive, and thus give inordinate strength to an inferior sentiment, while honestly in quest of a right action. For a few times, perhaps even for a few years, the appeal may be successful; but, by and by, the inferior sentiment, or propensity, will gain predominance, and usurp the throne, and rule by virtue of its own might.

So, too, a train of circumstances may be prepared, or a system of government adopted, designed by their author for good, yet productive of a venomous brood of feelings. Suppose a teacher attempts to secure obedience by fear, instead of love, but still lacks the energy or the talent requisite for success. Forth with, and from the necessity of the case, there are two hostile parties in that school,-the teacher with his government to maintain, the pupils with their various and ever-springing desires to gratify, in defiance of that government. Not only will there be revolts and mutinies, revolutions and counter-revolutions in such a school, but, what is infinitely worse because of its meanness and baseness, there will be generated a moral pestilence of deception and trickery. The boldest spirits,-those already too bold and fool-hardy,-will break out into open rebellion, and thus begin to qualify themselves to , become, in after-life, violators and contemners of the laws of society; while those who are already prone to concealment and perfidy, will sharpen their wits for deception; they will pretend to be saying or doing one thing when saying or doing another; they will sever the connection between tongue and heart; they will make the eyes, the face, and all the organs that contribute to the natural language, belie the thoughts; and, in fine,

will turn the whole body into an instrument of dissimulation. Such children, under such management, are every day preparing to become,not men of frankness, of ingenuousness, of a beautiful transparency of disposition,-but sappers and miners of character,-men accomplishing all their ends by stratagem and ambush, and as full of guile as the first serpent. Who of us has not seen some individual so secretive and guileful as to be impervious to second-sight, or even to the boasted vision of animal magnetism? I cannot but believe that most of those hateful specimens of duplicity, I might rather say, of triplicity, or multiplicity, which we sometimes encounter in society, had their origin in the attempts made in early life, to evade commands injudiciously given, or not enforced when given. If any thing pertaining to the education of children demands discretion, prudence, wisdom, it is the commands which we impose upon them. In no case ought a command ever to be issued to a child without a moral certainty either that it will be voluntarily obeyed, or, if resisted, that it can be enforced; because disobedience to superiors, who stand at first in the place of the child's conscience, prepares the way for disobedience to conscience itself, when that faculty is developed. Hence the necessity of discriminating, as a preliminary, between what a child will do, or can be made to do, and the contrary. Hence, when disobedience is apprehended, the issue should be tried rather on a case of prohibition than of injunction, because a child can be deterred when he cannot be compelled. Hence, also, the necessity of discriminating between what a child has the moral power to do, and what it is in vain to expect from him. Take a child who has been brought up luxuriously, indulgently, selfishly, and command him, in the first instance, to incur some great sacrifice for a mere stranger, or for

some object which he neither understands nor values, and disobedience is as certain as long days in the middle of June;--I mean the disobedience of the spirit, for fear, perhaps, may secure the performance of the outward act. Such a child knows nothing of the impulsions of conscience, of the joyful emotions that leap up in the heart after the performance of a generous deed; and it is as absurd to put such a weight of self-denial upon his benevolence, the first time, as it would be to put a camel's load upon his shoulders. Such a child is deeply diseased. He is a moral paralytic. In regard to all benevolent exertion and sacrifice, he is as weak as an infant; and he can be recovered and strengthened to virtuous resolutions only by degrees. What should we think of a physician, who, the first time his patient emerged from a sick chamber;-pallid, emaciated, tottering,should prescribe a match at wrestling, or the running of races? Yet this would be only a parallel to the mode in which selfish or vicious children are often treated; nay, some persons prepare or select the most difficult cases,-cases requiring great generosity or moral intrepidity,-by which to break new beginners into the work of benevolence or duty. If, by a bad education, a child has lost all generous affections, (for no child is born without them;) if he never shares his books or divides his luxuries with his playmates; if he hides his playthings at the approach of his little visiters; if his eye never kindles at the recital of a magnanimous deed, of course I mean one the magnanimity of which he can comprehend,-then he can be won back to kindness and justice only by laborious processes, and in almost imperceptible degrees. In every conversation before such children, generosity and self-denial should be spoken of with a fervor of admiration and a glow of sympathy. Stories should be told or read

before them, in which the principal actors are signalized by some of the qualities they delight in, (always provided that no element of evil mingles with them,) and when their attachments are firmly fastened upon hero or heroine, then the social, amiable and elevated sentiments which are deficient in the children themselves, should be developed in the actors or characters whom they have been led to admire. A child may be led to admire qualities on account of their relationships and associations, when he would be indifferent to them if presented separately. If a child is selfish, the occasion for kind acts should be prepared, where all the accompaniments are agreeable. As the sentiment of benevolence gains tone and strength, and begins to realize some of those exquisite gratifications which God, by its very constitution, has annexed to its exercise, then let the collateral inducements be weakened, and the experiments assume more of the positive character of virtue. In this way, a child so selfish and envious as to be grieved even at the enjoyment of others, may be won, at last, to seek for delight in offices of humanity and self-sacrifice. There is always an avenue through which a child's mind can be reached; the failures come from our want of perseverance and sagacity in seeking it. We must treat moral more as we treat physical distempers. Week after week the mother sits by the sick bed, and welcomes fasting and vigils; her watchfulness surrounds her child, and with all the means and appliances that wealth or life can command, she strives to bar up every avenue through which death can approach him. Did mothers care as much for the virtues and moral habits as for the health and life of their offspring, would they not be as patient, as hopeful, and as longsuffering in administering antidote and remedy to

a child who is morally, as to one who is physically, diseased?

Is it not in the way above described, after a slowly brightening twilight of weeks, perhaps of months, that the oculist, at last, lets in the light of the meridian sun upon the couched eye? Is it not in this way, that the convalescent of a fevered bed advances, from a measured pittance of the weakest nutrition, to that audacious health which spurns at all restraints upon appetite, whether as to quantity or quality? For these healings of the diseased eye or body, we demand the professional skill and science of men, educated and trained to the work; nay, if any impostor or empiric wantonly tampers with eye or life, the injured party accuses him, the officers of the law arrest him, the jurors upon their oaths convict him, the judges pass sentence, and the sheriff executes the mandates of the law;-while parties, officers, jurors, judges and sheriffs, with one consent, employ teachers to direct and train the godlike faculties of their children, who never had one hour of special study, who never received one lesson of special instruction, to fit them for their momentous duties.

If, then, the business of education, in all its departments, be so responsible; if there be such liability to excite and strengthen any one faculty of the opening mind, instead of its antagonist; if there be such danger of promoting animal and selfish propensities into command over social and moral sentiments; if it be so easy for an unskilful hand to adjust opportunity to temptation in such a way that the exposed are almost certain to fall; if it be a work of such delicacy and difficulty to reclaim those who have wandered; if, in fine, one, not deeply conversant with the human soul, with all its various faculties and propensities, and with all the circumstances and objects which naturally