to his dress or to his physical comforts than to his moral and mental worth, it cannot be expected that he will be anything but vain, selfish, and shallow; if he hears his instructors spoken of disrespectfully, he cannot be expected to obey them, or to value what they teach; if his parents spend their lives in trifling occupations and sensual pleasures, if all their actions prove that they place money above learning and virtue, he cannot be expected to seek his enjoyment in serious studies and in virtuous habits. Let parents, then, who cannot altogether reform themselves, and who feel that they have not reached that moral perfection which they desire for their children, watch most carefully their own conduct and language while in their presence. The conversations which are overheard have the most influence, because they are received without distrust or suspicion. The superiority which parents naturally have over a child invests them, in his eyes, with a dignity which, to his innocent mind, implies virtue and perfection. Let them act so as to justify this salutary notion: and if it be well impressed in the opening stage of life, parental authority will be long influential and revered. Happy the children whose parents show them only good example, and who are not deprived of its advantages by being removed from their society at too tender an age. More happy still are the parents who, by an exemplary life, implant the seeds of all virtues in the hearts of their children, and thus secure the most legitimate claims to their affection and gratitude. The severe discipline of school can never, during the first two periods of youth, supply the place of parental solicitude and of a wellregulated family. The influence founded on affection, which is, at home, the main-spring of government, is the most powerful. Filial piety, strengthened by an uninterrupted virtuous family intercourse, must be to young people the source of the kindest sentiments and of all moral virtues. When circumstances do not permit parents to preside themselves over the education of their young family, they should, if their means allow it, have their place supplied by persons whose experience, high morality, cultivated minds, and love for children, render them worthy of their entire confidence. So difficult is it, however, to supply properly the place of a parent, that many moralists object to this delegation of duty. Among others, J. J. Rousseau, the eloquent advocate of the rights of humanity, insists on a father's educating his own children. "He owes," he men to his species, social beings to society, and citizens says, to the state. Any man who can pay this triple debt, and does it not, is guilty, and more guilty still when he pays it only by half. He who cannot fulfil the duties of a father has no right to be one. No poverty, no occupation in life, no human respect, can permit him to dispense with maintaining, with educating his offspring himself. You may believe me, readers, I foretell that whoever neglects this holy duty will long shed bitter tears over his fault, and will not be consoled."* The family has been appointed by Providence for the moral discipline of the children, and the school has been instituted by society for their intellectual training. The more important part of education devolves, consequently, on the parents: they, or the resident preceptor, being continually with them, can take advantage of circumstances, as they arise, to make a desirable impression: there are innumerable opportunities of doing so in domestic life, which cannot occur in large seminaries. A teacher in a school, being with his pupils only during their hours of study, has few opportunities of noticing their moral failings, and cannot practise in their presence any of those virtues which are best taught by example. This is rather the business of a parent than that of a professor. The latter may cultivate the children's intellect, and assist them in acquiring knowledge; he may instruct a hundred of them, but he cannot educate even one. Kindly feelings, moral dispositions, and virtuous habits are the fruit of home education. The theory of morals may be taught in schools; but the practice is acquired in the family circle. "Nothing can equal a good domestic education," says Saint Marc-Girardin. "It is preferable to all lay and ecclesiastical colleges. I will go further; I believe that in the paternal house alone can any education be found. Colleges give instruction, but they cannot give education. The training of the soul, the teaching of duty, the preparation for the difficulties and disappointments of life-all this is beyond the discipline of a college. We instruct, we do not educate in our schools; we cultivate and unfold the mind, but not the heart." + Favourable, however, as the family is to the moral discipline of the child, it must be acknowledged that, in the present order of things, such a discipline is impracticable in the middle and, more particularly, the lower class of society. Many parents can neither undertake the education of their young children, nor * Emile. ↑ De l'Instruction intermédiaire dans le Midi de l'Allemagne. procure resident educators. Some, engaged as they are in the pleasures, and others in the business of life, the poorer class especially neglect them altogether, or give them, in their own conduct, the worst example; whilst those in affluence often abandon to domestics their physical and moral culture. Hence arise, to a lamentable extent, the bad health, bad temper, and bad propensities, which prevail among the young. An ignorant or passionate nurse, a vulgar or vicious servant, is one of the greatest curses with which the dawn of humanity can be visited. Until parents, and society in general, are regenerated by education, the most practicable way of obviating the fatal consequence of neglect or bad example at home, would consist in having infant schools extensively diffused throughout the community, some being provided by the state for the labouring classes, and others, by private speculation for those who can pay. These schools should be established on the principle of family government for physical and moral, rather than for intellectual training. If they were distributed and organised so as to be within the reach of all families, and to suit their different circumstances, parents would not,-nay, should not hesitate to send their children to them, as they could then better attend to their own occupations, and would secure for their offspring a better discipline than they could give them at home. Religious feelings, respect for masters, affability to all, regard for truth, sense of duty, desire for knowledge, taste for order, habits of industry and self-government-all are the results of a good domestic education, or of a well-conducted infant-school. Such virtuous habits, by securing the happiest dispositions to study, prepare the way for instruction. The child, whose morality rests on a proper foundation, will generally be little inclined to inattention: he will cheerfully give himself to industry; and, being more disposed to reflect and observe, he cannot fail to advance rapidly in any intellectual pursuit which is marked out for him. But, of all the means of directing the will of youth, the most durable and most certain is the early cultivation of love and reverence to the supreme Being, and a sense of his unceasing watchfulness over his creatures. If parents be themselves animated with such sentiments, they will easily, and without having recourse to precepts, impress them on their children. These sentiments are the first wants of the child, and by far more important to him and to society at large than any mental acquisition. Without religion and morality, knowledge, let it be repeated, is only the power of doing mischief. SECT. VI.-DUTIES OF PARENTS WITH RESPECT TO INSTRUCTION. Information, although only secondary in early education, must not be overlooked by parents. It is part of their duty to their offspring to prepare them for the arduous labour of scholastic instruction, and to give them habits of self-teaching, in order that they may not depend on the instructor for what should devolve on themselves. They ought to impart to them an accurate practical knowledge of their own language, with correct notions of the external world and of things in general, which may render more interesting and easy their future study, either of languages or of sciences. Home education should be subsidiary to public education. However, parents should not force nature, but preserve the child from premature mental excitement. They will have no reason to regret his backwardness in intellectual education, if, on entering the third period, he be blooming in health and lively in spirits, if his sympathies are prompt, his curiosity active, his self-love duly controlled; if he habitually appeals to his conscience, and readily submits his will to that of his superiors. With such a preparation the period of mental culture will open with a bright prospect. "The effect of the pains which are taken in the first nine or ten years of a child's life,” says Miss Edgeworth, "may not be apparent immediately to the view, but it will gradually become visible. To careless observers, two boys of nine years old, who have been very differently educated, may appear nearly alike in abilities, in temper, and in the promise of future character. Send them both to a large public school-let them be placed in the same new situation, and exposed to the same trials, the difference will then appear: the difference in a few years will be such as to strike every eye; and people will wonder what can have produced in so short a time such an amazing change. "Suppose that parents educated their children well for the first nine years of their lives, and then sent them all to public seminaries, what a difference this must immediately make in public education! The boys would be disposed to improve themselves with all the ardour which the most sanguine preceptor could desire; their masters would find no habits of idleness to conquer: no perverse stupidity would provoke them; no capricious contempt of application would appear in pupils of the quickest abilities. The pupils would be all fit companions for each other; they would not have any new character to learn; they would improve by mixing with numbers; and, though they would love their companions, they would not, therefore, combine together to treat their instructors as pedagogues and tyrants."* The supposed training by which Miss Edgeworth imagines children to be prepared for public seminaries at the early age of nine, has, in the present state of society, no chance of being realised. The carelessness of some parents and the ignorance of others, will unfortunately long continue to supply those establishments with the seeds of all vices; and large assemblages of young people will always defeat the best efforts which the few persons placed over them make to check the progress of evil propensities among them. Anxious parents must then defer exposing their sons, and, more especially, their daughters, to the worst of influences—the example of mischievous companions,— until their moral character is capable of resisting temptation. Under even the most favourable circumstances they cannot be formed to those moral and religious habits which will preserve them from the dangers of the scholastic life, before they have entered upon the third period of youth. Public instruction is, in many respects, highly useful when the intellectual powers of the child are equal to the labour it imposes; and, with regard to the formation of the character, it has greatly the advantage over private education. However, the intercourse existing between the young inmates of large boarding schools is far from always possessing a beneficial tendency. It is said to be the best apprenticeship of life, on account of its analogy with the world; but, as in the case of this prototype, more virtue and self-control than young persons usually possess are required to pass through its ordeal, without contamination. When the moral habits and the intellectual development of young people enable them to attend public schools, we would prefer that it should be as day-pupils. This middle course, generally adopted in Germany, which combines the benefits of the two modes of education-private and public -would prevent many of the evils attendant on a long and *Practical Education. |