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Is the author then inculcating the harsh doctrine of paternal austerity? By no means. verity drives the gentle spirit to artifice, and the rugged to despair. It generates deceit and cunning, the most hopeless and hateful in the whole catalogue of female failings. Ungoverned anger in the teacher, and inability to discriminate between venial errors and premeditated offence, though they may lead a timid creature to hide wrong tempers, or to conceal bad actions, will not help her to subdue the one or to correct the other. The dread of severity will drive terrified children to seek, not for reformation, but for impunity. A readiness to forgive them promotes frankness; and we should, above all things, encourage them to be frank, in order to come at their faults. They have not more faults for being open, they only discover more; and to know the worst of the character we have to regulate, will enable us to make it better.

Discipline, however, is not cruelty, and restraint is not severity. A discriminating teacher will appreciate the individual character of each pupil, in order to appropriate her management. We must strengthen the feeble, while we repel the bold. We cannot educate by a receipt; for, after studying the best rules, and after digesting them into the best system, much must depend on contingent circumstances; for that which is good may yet be in

these examples are not taken from that middle rank of life in which Milton lived, but from the daughters of the highest officers in the state.

applicable. The cultivator of the human mind must, like the gardener, study diversities of soil, or he may plant diligently and water faithfully with little fruit. The skilful labourer knows that even where the surface is not particularly promising, there is often found a rough strong ground which will amply repay the trouble of breaking it up; yet we are often most taken with a soft surface, though it conceal a shallow depth, because it promises present reward and little trouble. But strong and pertinacious tempers, of which, perhaps, obstinacy is the leading vice, under skilful management often turn out steady and sterling characters; while from softer clay a firm and vigorous virtue is but seldom produced. Pertinacity is often principle, which wants nothing but to be led to its true object; while the uniformly yielding, and universally accommodating spirit is not seldom the result of a feeble tone of morals, of a temper eager for praise and acting for reward.

But these revolutions in character cannot be effected by mere education. Plutarch has observed, that the medical science would never be brought to perfection till poisons should be converted into physic. What our late improvers in natural science have done in the medical world, by converting the most deadly ingredients into instruments of life and health, Christianity, with a sort of divine alchymy, has effected in the moral world, by that transmutation which makes those passions which have been working for sin become active in the cause of religion. The violent temper of Saul

of Tarsus, which was "exceedingly mad " against the saints of God, did God see fit to convert into that burning zeal which enabled Paul the Apostle to labour so unremittingly for the conversion of the Gentile world. Christianity, indeed, does not so much give us new affections or faculties, as give a new direction to those we already have. She changes that sorrow of the world which worketh death into "godly sorrow which worketh repentance." She changes our anger against the persons we dislike into hatred of their sins. "The fear of

man which worketh a snare," she transmutes into "that fear of God which worketh salvation." That religion does not extinguish the passions, but only alters their object, the animated expressions of the fervid Apostle confirm :-"Yea, what fearfulness; yea, what clearing of yourselves; yea, what indignation; yea, what fear; yea, what vehement desire; yea, what zeal; yea, what revenge.”

Thus, by some of the most troublesome passions of our nature being converted by the blessing of God on a religious education to the side of virtue, a double purpose is effected. Because, it is the character of the passions never to observe a neutrality. If they are no longer rebels, they become auxiliaries; and the accession of strength is doubled, because a foe subdued is an ally obtained. For it is the effect of religion on the passions, that when she seizes the enemy's garrison, she does not content herself with defeating its future mischiefs, she does not destroy the works, she does not burn the 2 Corinthians, vii. 11.

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arsenal, and spike the cannon; but the artillery she seizes, she turns to her own use; she attacks in her turn, and plants its whole force against the enemy from whom she has taken it.

But while I would deprecate harshness, I would enforce discipline; and that not merely on the ground of religion but of happiness also. One reason, not seldom brought forward by tender but mistaken mothers, as an apology for their unbounded indulgence, especially to weakly children, is, that they probably will not live to enjoy the world when grown up, and that, therefore, they would not abridge the little pleasure they may enjoy at present, lest they should be taken out of the world without having tasted any of its delights. But a slight degree of observation would prove that this is an error in judgment as well as in principle. For, omitting any considerations respecting their future welfare, and entering only into their immediate interests, it is an indisputable fact that children who know no control, whose faults encounter no contradiction, and whose humours experience constant indulgence, grow more irritable and capricious, invent wants, create desires, lose all relish for the pleasures which they know they may reckon upon; and become, perhaps, more miserable than even those unfortunate children, who labour under the more obvious and more commiserated misfortune of suffering under the tyranny of unkind parents.

An early habitual restraint is peculiarly important to the future character and happiness of

women.

A judicious, unrelaxing, but steady and gentle curb on their tempers and passions can alone insure their peace and establish their principles. It is a habit which cannot be adopted too soon, nor persisted in too pertinaciously. They should when very young be inured to contradiction. Instead of hearing their bon mots treasured up and repeated till the guests are tired, and till the children begin to think it dull, when they themselves are not the little heroines of the tale, they should be accustomed to receive but moderate praise for their vivacity or their wit, though they should receive just commendation for such qualities as have more worth than splendour.

Patience, diligence, quiet, and unfatigued perseverance, industry, regularity, and economy of time, as these are the dispositions I would labour to excite, so these are the qualities I would warmly commend. So far from admiring genius, or extolling its prompt effusions, I would rather intimate that excellence, to a certain degree, is in the power of every competitor; that it is the vanity of over-valuing herself for supposed original powers, and slackening exertion in consequence of that vanity, which often leaves the lively ignorant, and the witty superficial. A girl who overhears her mother tell the company that she is a genius, and is so quick, that she never thinks of applying to her task till a few minutes before she is to be called to repeat it, will acquire such a confidence in her own abilities, that she will be advancing in conceit, as she is falling short in knowledge.