answer to the popular declamations on the inequality of human conditions, were the rich carefully to instruct their children to soften that inevitable inequality by the mildness and tenderness of their behaviour to their inferiors? This dispensation of God, which excites so many sinful murmurs, would, were it thus practically improved, tend to establish the glory of that Being who is now so often charged with injustice; for God himself is covertly attacked in many of the invectives against laws, governments, and the supposed arbitrary and unjust disproportion of ranks and riches.

This dispensation, thus properly improved, would at once call into exercise the generosity, kindness, and forbearance of the superior, and the patience, resignation, and gratitude of the inferior: and thus, while we were vindicating the ways of Providence, we should be accomplishing his plan, by bringing into action those virtues of both classes, which would have had little exercise, had there been no inequality in station and fortune. Those more exalted persons who, are so zealously contending for the privileges of rank and power, should never lose sight of the religious duties and considerate virtues which the possession of rank and power imposes on themselves; duties and virtues which should ever be inseparable from those privileges. As the inferior classes have little real right to complain of laws in this respect, let the great be watchful to give them as little cause to complain of manners. In order to this, let them carefully train up their children to supply by individual kindness those cases of hardship which laws cannot reach; let them obviate, by an active and well-directed compassion, those imperfections of which the best-constructed human institutions must unavoidably partake; and, by the exercise of private bounty, early inculcated, soften those distresses which can never come under the cognizance of even the best government. Let them teach their offspring, that the charity of the rich should ever be subsidiary to the public provision in those numberless instances to which the most equal laws cannot apply. By such means, every lesson of politics may be converted into a lesson of piety; and a spirit of condescending love might win over some, whom a spirit of invective will only inflame.

Among the instances of negligence into which even religiously disposed parents and teachers are apt to fall, one is, that they are not sufficiently attentive in finding interesting employment for the Sunday. They do not make a scruple of sometimes allowing their children to fill up the intervals of public worship with their ordinary employments and common school exercises. They are not aware that they are training their offspring to an early and a systematic profanation of the Sabbath by this custom; for to children, their tasks are their business; to them a French or Latin exercise is as serious an occupation as the exercise of a trade or profession is to a man; and if they are allowed to think the one right now, they will not be brought hereafter to think that the other is wrong; for the opinions and practices fixed at this important season are not easily altered; and an early habit becomes rooted into an inveterate prejudice. By this oversight, even the friends of religion may be contributing eventually to that abolition of the Lord's day, so devoutly wished and so indefatigably laboured after by its enemies, as the desired preliminary to the destruction of whatever is most dear to Christians. What obstruction would it offer to the

general progress of youth, if all their Sunday exercises (which, with reading, composing, transcribing, and getting by heart, might be extended to an entertaining variety) were adapted to the peculiar nature of the day?

Those whose own spirits and vigour of mind are exhausted by the amusements of the world, and who therefore grow faint and languid under the continuance of serious occupation, are not aware how different the case is with lively young people, whose spring of action has not been broken by habitual indulgence. They are not aware that a firm and well-disciplined intellect wants, comparatively, little amusement. The mere change from one book to another, is a relief almost amounting to pleasure. But then the variation must be judiciously made, so that to novelty must be superadded comparative amusement; that is, the gradation should be made from the more to the less serious book. If care be thus taken that greater exertion of the mental powers shall not be required, when, through length of application, there is less ability or disposition to exert them; such a well-ordered distinction will produce on the mind nearly the same effect as a new employment.

It is not meant to impose on them such rigorous study as shall convert the day they should be taught to love into a day of burdens and hardships, or to abridge them of such innocent enjoyments as are compatible with a season of holy rest. It is intended merely to suggest that there should be a marked distinction in the nature of their employments and studies; for, on the observance or neglect of this, as was before observed, their future notions and principles will in a good degree be formed. The gospel, in rescuing the Lord's day from the rigorous bondage of the Jewish sabbath, never lessened the obligation to keep it holy, nor meant to sanction any secular occupation.* Christianity, in lightening its austerities, has not defeated the end of its institution; in purifying its spirit, it has not abolished its object.

Though the author, chiefly writing with a view to domestic instruction, has purposely avoided entering on the disputed question, whether a school or home education be best; a question which perhaps must generally be decided by the state of the individual home, and the state of the individual school; yet she begs leave to suggest one remark, which peculiarly belongs to a school education; namely, the general habit of converting the Sunday into a visiting day, by way of gaining time: as if the appropriate instructions of the Lord's day were the cheapest sacrifice which could be made to pleasure. Even in those schools, in which religion is considered as an indispensable part of instruction, this kind of instruction is almost exclusively limited to Sundays: how then are girls ever to make any progress in this most important article, if they are habituated to lose the religious advantages of the school, for the sake of having more dainties for dinner abroad? This remark cannot be supposed to apply to the visits which children make to religious parents, and indeed it only applies to those cases where the school is a conscientious school, and the visit a trifling visit.

Among other subjects which engross a good share of worldly conversation, one of the most attracting is beauty. Many ladies have often a * The strongest proof of this observation is the conduct of the first Christians, who had their instructions immediately from the apostles.

random way of talking rapturously on the general importance and the fascinating power of beauty, who are yet prudent enough to be very unwilling to let their own daughters find out they are handsome. Perhaps the contrary course might be safer. If the little listener were not constantly hearing that beauty is the best gift, she would not be so vain from fancying herself to be the best gifted. Be less solicitous, therefore, to conceal from her a secret, which, with all your watchfulness, she will be sure to find out without your telling; but rather seek to lower the general value of beauty in her estimation. Use your daughter in all things to a different standard from that of the world. It is not by vulgar people and servants only that she will be told of her being pretty. She will be hearing it, not only from gay ladies, but from grave men; she will be hearing it from the whole world around her. The antidote to the present danger is not now to be searched for; it must be already operating; it must have been provided for in the foundation laid in the general principle she has been imbibing before this particular temptation of beauty came in question. And this general principle is an habitual indifference to flattery. She must have learnt not to be intoxicated by the praise of the world. She must have learnt to estimate things by their intrinsic worth, rather than by the world's estimation. Speak to her with particular kindness and commendation of plain but amiable girls; mention with compassion such as are handsome, but ill-educated; speak casually of some who were once thought pretty, but have ceased to be good; make use of the arguments arising from the shortness and uncertainty of beauty, as strong additional reasons for making that which is little valuable in itself, still less valuable. As it is a new idea which is always dangerous, you may thus break the force of this danger by allowing her an early introduction to this inevitable knowledge, which would become more interesting, and of course more perilous, by every additional year; and if you can guard against that fatal and almost universal error of letting her see that she is more loved on account of her beauty, her familiarity with the idea may be less dangerous than its novelty afterwards would prove.

But the great and constant peril to which young persons in the higher walks of life are exposed, is the prevailing turn and spirit of general conversation. Even the children of better families, who are well instructed when at their studies, are yet at other times continually beholding the world set up in the highest and most advantageous point of view. Seeing the world! knowing the world! standing well with the world! making a figure in the world! is spoken of as including the whole sum and substance of human advantages. They hear their education almost exclusively alluded to with reference to the figure it will enable them to make in the world. In almost all companies, they hear all that the world admires spoken of with admiration; rank flattered, fame coveted, power sought, beauty idolised, money considered as the one thing needful, and as the astonishing substitute for the want of all other things; profit held up as the reward of virtue, and worldly estimation as the just and highest prize of laudable ambition; and after the very spirit of the world has been thus habitually infused into them all the week, one cannot expect much effect from their being coldly and customarily told now and then on Sundays, that they must not "love the world, nor the things of the world." To

tell them once in seven days that it is a sin to gratify an appetite which you have been whetting and stimulating the preceding six, is to require from them a power of self-control, which our knowledge of the impetuosity of the passions, especially in early age, should have taught us is impossible.

This is not the place to animadvert on the usual misapplication of the phrase, "knowing the world;" which term is commonly applied, in the way of panegyric, to keen, designing, selfish, ambitious men, who study mankind in order to turn them to their own account. But in the true sense of the expression, the sense which Christian parents would wish to impress on their children, to know the world is to know its emptiness, its vanity, its futility, and its wickedness. To know it, is to despise it, to be on our guard against it, to labour to live above it; and in this view an obscure Christian in a village may be said to know the world better than a hoary courtier or wily politician. For how can they be said to know it, who go on to love it, to value it, to be led captive by its allurements, to give their soul in exchange for its lying promises?

But while so false an estimate is often made in fashionable society, of the real value of things; that is, while Christianity does not furnish the standard, and human opinion does; while the multiplying our desires is considered as a symptom of elegance, though to subdue those desires is the grand criterion of religion; while moderation is beheld as indicating a poorness of spirit, though to that very poverty of spirit the highest promise of the gospel is assigned; while worldly wisdom is sedulously enjoined by worldly friends, in contradiction to that assertion, "that the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God;" while the praise of man is to be anxiously sought, in opposition to that assurance, that "the fear of man worketh a snare ;" while they are taught all the week, that "the friendship of the world" is the wisest pursuit; and on Sundays, that “it is enmity with God;" while these things are so (and that they are so in a good degree, who will undertake to deny ?) may we not venture to affirm that a Christian education, though it be not an impossible, is yet a very difficult work?"

CHAPTER VI.

On the Early Forming of Habits.-On the Necessity of forming the Judgment to direct those Habits.

Ir can never be too often repeated, that one of the great objects of education is the forming of habits. I may be suspected of having recurred too often, though hitherto incidentally, to this topic. It is, however, a topic of such importance, that it will be useful to consider it somewhat more in detail; as the early forming of right habits on sound principles scems to be one of the grand secrets of virtue and happiness.

The forming of any one good habit seems to be effected rather by avoiding the opposite bad habit, and resisting every temptation to the opposite vice, than by the mere occasional practice of the virtue required. Humility, for instance, is less an act than a disposition of mind. It is not so much a single performance of some detached humble deed, as an incessant watchfulness against every propensity to pride. Sobriety is not a promi

nent ostensible thing; it evidently consists in a series of negations, and not of actions. It is a conscientious habit of resisting every incentive to intemperance. Meekness is best attained and exemplified by guarding against every tendency to anger, impatience, and resentment. A habit of attention and application is formed by early and constant vigilance against a trifling spirit and a wandering mind. A habit of industry, by watching against the blandishments of pleasure, the waste of small portions of time, and the encroachment of small indulgences.

Now, to stimulate us to an earnest desire of working any or all of these habits into the minds of children, it will be of importance to consider what a variety of uses each of them involves.

To take, for example, the case of moderation and temperance. It would seem, to a superficial observer, of no very great importance to acquire a habit of self-denial in respect either to the elegances of decoration, or to the delicacies of the table, or to the common routine of pleasure; that there can be no occasion for an indifference to luxuries harmless in themselves, and no need of daily moderation in those persons who are possessed of affluence, and to whom, therefore, as the expense is no object, so the forbearance is thought of no importance. Those acts of self-denial, I admit, when contemplated by themselves, appear to be of no great value, yet they assume high importance, if you consider what it is to have, as it were, dried up the spring of only one importunate passion; if you reflect, after any one such conquest is obtained, how easily, comparatively speaking, it is followed up by others.

How much future virtue and self-government, in more important things, may a mother therefore be securing to that child, who should always remain in as high a situation as she is in when the first foundations of this quality are laying; but should any reverse of fortune take place in the daughter, how much integrity and independence of mind also may be prepared for her, by the early excision of superfluous desires. She, who has been trained to subdue these propensities, will, in all probability, be preserved from running into worthless company, merely for the sake of the splendour which may be attached to it. She will be rescued from the temptation to do wrong things, for the sake of enjoyments from which she cannot abstain. She is delivered from the danger of flattering those whom she despises; because her moderate mind and well-ordered desires do not solicit indulgences, which could only be procured by mean compliances. For she will have been habituated to consider the character as the leading circumstance of attachment, and the splendour as an accident, which may or may not belong to it; but which, when it does, as it is not a ground of merit in the possessor, so it is not to be the ground of her attachment. The habit of self-control, in small as well as in great things, involves in the aggregate less loss of pleasure, than will be experienced by disappointments in the mind ever yielding itself to the love of present indulgences, whenever those indulgences should be abridged or withdrawn.

She who has been accustomed to have an early habit of restraint exercised over all her appetites and temper; she who has been used to set bounds to her desires as a general principle, will have learned to withstand a passion for dress and personal ornaments; and the woman who has conquered this propensity, has surmounted one of the most domineering