the human character, and in removing the great obstacles to the reception of knowledge and the love of virtue. The youth who has never learned to obey, will never know how to command others, or govern himself.

Many youth willingly receive instruction, and cheerfully obey; but there are some who resist all authority. These claim much attention and care; obedience must be obtained, or they are ruined. If recourse be had to frequent punishment, it hardens and provokes obstinacy; persuasion, entreaty and promises also fail. What must be done? Take the youth under your special care, acquaint him with your purpose, particularize his faults, admonish him often; but let it generally be done in private; and if he has any generosity, he will feel his obligation, and hate the occasion of it. A refractory boy should be constantly under the eye of the instructor, and every departure from propriety or good behavior should be checked. When the teacher has once entered upon the entire engagement of a scholar, for the purpose of inducing obedience, and when repeated admonition and counsel have been tried in vain, let him be chastised, and let the chastisement be repeated till the mind be subdued. Having proceeded thus far, there can be no compromise; the boy must implicitly submit and yield to your authority.

Such is the nature of the discipline I wish to see generally enforced; because facts, rather than theory, have led me to the conviction, that it is the best,-I may say the only direct way to form the manly and virtuous character. When the will is subdued, and habits of obedience and self-control are in a measure established, the next object of attention is to strengthen and invigorate the mind. Habits of bodily as well as mental exercise must be endured, and that method, whatever it may be, which awakens and calls into operation the latent faculties of the mind, ought to be embraced by every one interested in the important business of education. ACADEMICIAN.

A REFLECTION. It should he remembered that every loathsome inmate of penitentiaries and State prisons, was once a gentle, inoffensive, and prattling child; and that every criminal who has "expiated his crimes on the gallows," was once pressed to a mother's heart, and drew his life-giving nourishment from her bosom. Bad moral training, wrong and debasing examples, do their work, and transform endearing offspring into ferocious men, who shock humanity by the foulness of their guilt, and the monstrous audacity of their crimes. - Eclectic Journal of Education, and Literary Review.

EDUCATION.

THE greatest vices derive their propensity from our most tender infancy, and our principal education depends on the nurse. Mothers are mightily pleased to see a child writhe the neck of a chicken, or please itself with hurting a cat or dog; and such wise fathers there are in the world, who consider it as a notable mark of a martial spirit, when they hear their sons miscall, or see them domineer over a peasant or lackey, that dares not reply or turn again; and a great sign of wit, when they see them. cheat and overreach their playfellows by some malicious trick of treachery and deceit: but for all that, these are the true seed and roots of cruelty, tyranny, and treason. - Montaigne.

In the education of children, there is nothing like alluring the appetites and affection; otherwise you make so many asses laden with books, and by virtue of the lash, give them their pocket full of learning to keep; whereas, to do well, you should not only lodge it with them, but make them espouse it.-Montaigne.

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think rather to improve our minds so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men. - Beattie.

Many fathers there are, that so love their money and hate their children, that lest it should cost them more than they are willing to spare to hire a good schoolmaster for them, rather choose such persons to instruct their children, as are of no worth; thereby beating down the market, that they may purchase a cheap ignorance. It was therefore a witty and handsome jeer which Aristippus bestowed on a sottish father, by whom being asked what he would take to teach his child, he answered, a thousand drachms. Whereupon the other cried out, 0, Hercules! how much out of the way you ask! for I can buy a slave at that rate. Do then, said the philosopher, and thou shalt, instead of one, purchase two slaves for thy money; him that thou buyest for one, and thy son for another. - Plutarch.

Wines, the stronger they be, the more lees they have when they are new. Many boys are muddy-headed till they be clarified with age, and such afterwards prove the best. Bristol diamonds are both bright, and squared, and pointed by nature, and yet are soft and worthless; whereas orient ones in India are rough and rugged naturally. Hard, rugged, and dull natures of youth acquit themselves afterwards the jewels of the

country, and therefore their dulness at first is to be borne with, if they be diligent. That schoolmaster deserves to be beaten. himself who beats nature in a boy, for a fault. And I question whether all the whipping in the world can make their parts, which are naturally sluggish, rise one minute before the hour Nature hath appointed.-Fuller.

A child readily distinguishes between the language of passion and that of reason, and soon comes to despise the former; and when this is the case, there immediately results an inferiority on the part of the parent or teacher, which is entirely subversive of the necessary influence and authority. John Locke.

Children are to have nothing conceded to their fancy, but only to their wants. If they have been rightly educated, they will have been taught to know that their good is sought in every thing that is done for them, and with this confidence they wil learn to leave all matters to the judgment of their guardians.John Locke.

Among the various natural propensities which ought to be made use of to further the objects of education, curiosity is one. The inquiries of children are to be hearkened to with patience and attention, and no satisfaction is to be withheld from them. Consider well what they seek to know, and enlighten them on that particular point, not throwing in more information than they can pleasantly receive; thus they will be pleased by such attention, and gratified with their success, and tempted to new questions. -John Locke.

If the first corruption be not sucked in from the domestic manners, a little providence might secure men in their first entrance into the world; at least, if parents took as much care to provide for their children's conversation, as they do for their clothes, and to procure a good friend for them, as a good tailor. - Clarendon.

A man shall see, where there is a house full of children, one or two of the eldest respected, and the youngest made wantons; but in the midst, some that are as it were forgotten, who, many times, nevertheless, prove the best. The illiberality of parents, in allowance towards their children, is a harmful error, and makes them base; acquaints them with shifts; makes them sort with mean company; and makes them surfeit more when they come to plenty and therefore the proof is best when men keep their authority towards their children, but not their purse.Lord Bacon.

Education of youth is not a bow for every man to shoot in, that counts himself a teacher; but will require sinews almost equal to those which Homer gave Ulysses. - Milton.

The best rules to form a young man, are, to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one's own opinions, and value others that deserve it. -Sir W. Temple.

Parents, and mothers most especially, must learn that their parental duties have not ceased when the personal comforts of their children are provided for; that it is on their example, their attention, their firmness, that much of the moral worth of their offspring depends. John Locke.

Dr. Johnson being once asked What he thought the best system of education, he replied, "School in school hours, and home instruction in the intervals."

6

'No,

On another occasion, a "Mrs. Gastrell set a little girl to repeat to him Cato's soliloquy, which she went through very correctly. The Doctor, after a pause, asked the child 'what was to bring Cato to an end.' She said it was a knife. my dear, it was not so.' My aunt Polly said it was a knife.' Why, aunt Polly's knife may do, but it was a dagger, my dear.' He then asked her the meaning of 'bane and antidote,' which she was unable to give. Mrs. Gastrell said, 'You cannot expect so young a child to know the meaning of such words.' He then said, 'My dear, how many pence are there in sixpence ?' 'I cannot tell, sir,' was the half-terrified reply.

On this, addressing himself to Mrs. Gastrell, he said, 'Now, my dear lady, can anything be more ridiculous than to teach a child Cato's soliloquy, who does not know how many pence there are in sixpence?""

What Goldsmith said almost a century ago, in regard to the mode of treating the subject of education, is to the point now, and a majority of the writers on the subject would do well to ponder it.

"As few subjects are more interesting to society, so few have been more frequently written upon, than the education of youth. Yet is it not a little surprising, that it should have been treated by all in a declamatory manner? They have insisted largely on the advantages that result from it, both to the individual and to society, and have expatiated in the praise of what none have ever been so hardy as to call in question. Instead of giving us fine, but empty harangues upon this subject; instead of indulging each his particular and whimsical

systems, it had been much better if the writers on this subject. had treated it in a more scientific manner, repressed all the sallies of imagination, and given us the result of their observations with didactic simplicity. Upon this subject, the smallest errors are of the most dangerous consequence; and the author should venture the imputation of stupidity upon a topic, when his slightest deviations may tend to injure the rising generation."

Give the sons of Massachusetts, small and comparatively unfertile as she is, the means of a good education, and they will stand against the world. Give me the means of educating my children, and I will not exchange its thirstiest sands, nor its barest peak, for the most fertile spot on earth, deprived of those blessings. I would rather occupy the bleakest nook of the mountain that towers above us, (Saddle Mountain, between Williamstown and Adams,) with the wild wolf and the rattle snake for my nearest neighbors, with a village school, well kept at the bottom of the hill, than dwell in a paradise of fertility, if I must bring up my children in lazy, pampered, self-sufficient ignorance. A man may protect himself against the rattle and the venom; but if he unnecessarily leaves the mind of his offspring a prey to ignorance, and the vices that too often follow in its train, he may find too late for remedy,

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is

To have a thankless child."

A thankless child! No, I will not wrong him. He may be anything else that is bad, but he cannot be a thankless child. What has he to be thankful for? No! the man who unnecessarily deprives his son of education, and thus knowingly trains him up in the way he should not go, may have a perverse, an intractable, a prodigal child, one who will bring down his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave, but a thankless child he cannot have.-Everett.

It is the most touching of sights, the burial of a little creature, which shuts its eyes as soon as the glories of earth open to its view, without having known the parents,whose tearful eyes are gazing on it; which has been beloved without loving in return; whose tongue is silenced before it has spoken; whose features stiffen before they have smiled. These falling buds will yet find a stock on which they shall be grafted; these flowers which close in the light of the morning, will yet find some more genial heaven to unfold them. From the German of Paul.