the strongest temptation, as well as the best recompence, for having done well!

And the promise of doing nothing is held out as | with the tempting remark, that they cannot have this or that dainty at school.' They are indulged in irregular hours for the same motive, because they cannot have that indulgence school.' Thus the natural seeds of idleness sensuality, and sloth, are at once cherished, by converting the periodical visit at home into season of intemperance, late hours, and exemp tion from learning. So that children are habi tuated, at an age when lasting associations are formed in the mind, to connect the idea of study with that of hardship, of happiness with gluttony, and of pleasure with loitering, feasting, or sleeping. Would it not be better, would it not be kinder, to make them combine the delightful idea of home, with the gratification of the social affec tions, the fondness of maternal love, the kindness, and warmth, and confidence of the sweet domestic attachments,

These, and such like errors of conduct arise from the latent, but very operative, principle of selfishness. This principle is obviously promoted by many habits and practice seemingly of little importance; and indeed selfiishness is so commonly interwoven with vanity and inconsideration that I have not always thought it necessary to mark the distinction. They are alternately cause and effect; and are produced and reproduced by reciprocal operation. They are a joint confederacy, who are mutually promoting each other's strength and interest; they are united by almost inseparable ties, and the indulgence of either is the gratification of all. Ill-judging tenderness is in fact only a concealed self-love, which cannot bear to be a witness to the uneasiness which a present disappointment, or difficulty, or vexation, would cause to a darling child; but which yet does not scruple by improper gratification to store up for it future miseries, which the child will infallibly suffer, though it may be at a distant period, which the selfish mother does not disturb herself by anticipating, because she thinks she may be saved the pain of beholding.

-And all the charities
Of father, son and brother?

I will venture to say, that those listless and vacant days, when the thoughts have no precise object; when the imagination has nothing to shape; when industry has no definitive pursuit; when the mind and the body have no exercise: and the ingenuity has no acquisition either to Another principle, something different from and the least happy, which children of spirit and anticipate or to enjoy, are the longest, the dullest, this, though it may probably fall under the head of selfishness, seems to actuate some parents in genius ever pass. Yes! it is a few short but their conduct towards their children: I mean a snatched from between the successive labours keen and lively intervals of animated pleasure, certain slothfulness of mind, a love of ease which and duties of a well-ordered, busy day, looked imposes a voluntary blindness, and makes them forward to with hope, enjoyed with taste, and not choose to see what will give them the trou-recollected without remorse, which, both to men ble to combat. From the persons in question we frequently hear such expressions as these Children will be children.'-'My children, suppose are much like those of other people,' &c. Thus we may observe this dangerous and delusive principle frequently turning off with a smile from the first indications of those tempers, which from their fatal tendency ought to be very seriously taken up. I would be understood now as speaking to conscientious parents, who consider it as a general duty to correct the faults of their children, but who, from this indolence of mind, are extremely backward in discovering such faults, and are not very well pleased when they are pointed out by others. Such parents will do well to take notice, that whatever they consider it is a duty to correct, must be equally a duty to endeavour to find out. And this indo

and to children, yield the truest portions of enjoyment. O snatch your offspring from adding to the number of those objects of supreme commiseration, who seek their happiness in doing nothing! The animal may be gratified by it, but the man is degraded. Life is but a short day; but it is a working day. Activity may lead to evil; but inactivity cannot be led to good.

Young ladies should also be accustomed to set apart a fixed portion of their time, as sacred to to the poor,* whether in relieving, instructing, or working for them; and the performance of this duty must not be left to the event of contingent circumstances, or operation of acciden tal impressions; but it must be established into a principle, and wrought into a habit. A specific portion of the day must be allotted to it, on which no common engagement must be allowed to intrench. Those periods of time, which are not stated, are seldom turned to their proper use; and nothing short of a regular plan (which must however be sometimes made to give way to cir

lent love of ease is the more to be guarded against, as it not only leads parents into erroneous conduct towards their children, but is peculiarly dangerous to themselves. It is a fault frequently cherished from ignorance of its real character; for not bearing on it the strong features of deformity which mark many other vices, but on the contrary bearing some resemblance to virtue, it is frequently mistaken for Christian graces of patience, meekness, and forbearance, than which nothing can be more opposite; these proceeding from that Christian principle of self-ces of sickness and sufferings peculiar to themselves, denial, the other from self-indulgence.

In this connexion may I be permitted to remark on the practice at the tables of many families when the children are at home for the holydays? Every delicacy is forced upon them,

* It would be a noble employment, and well becoming the tenderness of their sex, if ladies were to consider the superintendance of the poor as their immediate office. bits of life they are more intimately acquainted with doThey are peculiarly fitted for it, for from their own hamestic wants than the other sex; and in certain instan

they should be expected to have more sympathy; and they have obviously more leisure. There is a certain religious society, distinguished by simplicity of dress, manners, and language, whose poor are perhaps better taken care of than any other; and one reason may be, that they are immediately under the inspection of the women.

rcumstances) insures the conscientious discharge the whole of Sunday,' while she was virtually of any duty. This will help to furnish a powerful compelling her to do so, by an injunction to remedy for that selfishness, whose strong holds bring the gown home finished on the Monday (the truth cannot be too often repeated) it is the morning, on pain of her displeasure. To these grand business of Christian education perpe- hardships numbers are continually driven by tually to attack. If we were but aware how good natured but inconsiderate employers. As much better it makes ourselves to wish to see these petty exactions of inconsideration furnish others better and to assist in making them so, only a constant aliment to selfishness, let not a we should find that the good done would be of desire to counteract them be considered as leadas much importance by the habit of doing good, ing to too minute details; nothing is too frivowhich it would induce in our own minds, as by lous for animadversion, which tends to fix a bad its beneficial effects on the objects of our kind-habit in the superior, or to wound the feelings of the dependant.

ness.*

In what relates to pecuniary bounty, it will Would it not be turning those political docbe requiring of young persons a very small sa trines, which are now so warmly agitating, to crifice, if you teach them merely to give that a truly moral account, and give the best pracmoney to the poor which properly belongs not tical answer to the popular declamations on the to the child but to the parent; this sort of charity inequality of human conditions, were the rich commonly subtracts little from their own plea- carefully to instruct their children to soften that sures, especially when what they have bestowed inevitable inequality by the mildness and tenis immediately made up to them as a reward for derness of their behaviour to their inferiors? their little fit of generosity. They will, on this This dispensation of God, which excites so many plan, soon learn to give, not only for praise but sinful murmurs, would, were it thus practically for profit. The sacrifice of an orange to a little improved, tend to establish the glory of that girl, or feather to a great one, given at the ex-Being who is now so often charged with injuspense of their own gratification, would be a better lesson of charity on its right ground, than a considerable sum of money to be presently replaced by the parent, And it would be habituating them early to combine two ideas, which ought never to be separated, charity and self denial.

tice; 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 As an antidote to selfishness, as well as to the patience, resignation, and gratitude of the pride and indolence, they should also very early inferior; and thus, while we were vindicating be taught to perform all the little offices in their the ways of Providence, we should be accompower for themselves; they should be accustom-plishing his plan, by bringing into action those ed not to be insolently exercising their supposed prerogative of rank and wealth, by calling for servants where there is no real occasion; above all they should be accustomed to consider the domestics' hours of meals and rest as almost sacred, and the golden rule should be practicably and uniformly enforced, even on so trifling an occasion as ringing a bell, through mere wantonness, or self-love, or pride.

To check the growth of inconsiderateness, young ladies should early be taught to discharge their little debts with punctuality. They should be made sensible of the cruelty of obliging trades-people to call often for the money due to them; and of hindering and detaining those whose time is the source of their subsistence, under the pretence of some frivolous engagement, which ought to be made to bend to the comfort and advantage of others. They should conscientiously allow sufficient time for the execution of their orders; and with a Christian circumspection be careful not to drive work-people, by needless hurry, into losing their rest, or breaking the Sabbath. I have known a lady give her gown to a mantua-maker on the Satur. day night, to whom she would not for the world say in so many words, 'You must work through

* In addition to the instruction of the individual poor, and the superintendance of charity schools, ladies might be highly useful in assisting the parochial clergy in the adoption of that excellent plan for the instruction of the ignorant, suggested by the bishop of Durham in his last admirable charge to his clergy. It is with pleasure the author is enabled to add that the scheme has actually been adopted with good effect in that extensive diocese.

virtues of both classes, which would have 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 welldirected compassion, those imperfections of which the best constructed human institutions must unavoidably partake; and, by the exercise of private bounty, early inculcated, often 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 suffi ciently attentive in finding interesting employ

:

ment 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?

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; & 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 Those whose own spirits and vigour of mind attracting is beauty. Many ladies have often are exhausted by the amusements of the world, a random way of talking rapturously on the and who therefore grow faint and languid under general importance and the fascinating power the continuance of serious occupation, are not of beauty, who are yet prudent enough to be aware how different the case is with lively young very unwilling to let their own daughters find people, whose spring of action has not been out they are handsome. Perhaps the contrary broken by habitual indulgence. They are not course might be safer. If the little listener aware that a firm and well disciplined intellect were not constantly hearing that beauty is the wants, comparatively, little amusement. The best gift, she would not be so vain from fancymere change from one book to another, is a re- ing herself to be the best gifted. Be less solilief almost amounting to pleasure. But then citous, therefore, to conceal from her a secret, the variation must be judiciously made, so that which, with all your watchfulness, she will be to novelty must be superadded comparative sure to find out, without your telling; but rather amusement; that is, the gradation should be seek to lower the general value of beauty in her -made from the more to the less serious book. estimation. Use your daughter in all things to a If care be thus taken that greater exertion of different standard from that of the world. It is the mental powers shall not be required, when, not by vulgar people and servants only that she through length of application, there is less ability will be told of her being pretty. She will be hearor disposition to exert them; such a well ordering it not only from gay ladies, but from grave ed distinction, will produce on the mind nearly the same effect as a new employment. It is not meant to impose on them such rigor.is not now to be searched for ; it must be already ous study as shall convert the day they should operating; it must have been provided for in the be taught to love into a day of burdens and hard- foundation laid in the general principle she has ships, or to abridge them of such innocent en- been imbibing before this particular temptation joyments as are compatable with a season of of beauty came in question. And this general holy rest. It is intended merely to suggest that principle is an habitual indifference to flattery. there shod be a marked distinction in the na. She must have learnt not to be intoxicated by ture of their employments and studies; for on the praise of the world. She must have learnt the observance or neglect of this, as was before to estimate things by their intrinsic worth, observed, their future notions and principles will rather than by the world's estimation. Speak in a good degree be formed. The Gospel, in to her with particular kindness and commenda. rescuing the Lord's day from the rigorous bond- tion of plain but amiable girls; mention with age of the Jewish sabbath, never lessened the compassion such as are handsome but ill-eduobligation to keep it holy, nor meant to sanc-cated; speak casually of some who were once tion 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.

men; she will be hearing it from the whole world around her. The antidote to the present danger

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 duct of the first christians who had their instructions is a new idea which is always dangerous, you immediately from the Apostles. may thus break the force of this danger by al

The strongest proof of this observation is the con

lowing her an early introduction to this inevi-, rit, though to that very poverty of spirit the table knowledge, which would become more in-highest promise of the gospel is assigned; while teresting, and of course more perilous by every worldly wisdom is sedulously enjoined by worldadditional 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.

ly 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?

CHAP. VI.

ON THE EARLY FORMING OF HABITS.

On the necessity of forming the Judgment to di

rect those Habits.

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 admiIT can never be too often repeated, that one ration; rank flattered, fame coveted, power sought, beauty idolized, money considered as of the great objects of education is the forming the one thing needful, and as the atoning sub- of habits. I may be suspected of having recurstitute for the want of all other things; profit red too often, though hitherto only incidentally, held up as the reward of virtue, and worldly es- to this topic. It is, however, a topic of such imtimation as the just and highest prize of lauda-portance, that it will be useful to consider it ble 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 emp. tiness, 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 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 symp. tom of elegance, though to subdue those desires is the grand criterion of religion; while moderation is beheld as indicating a poorness of spi

somewhat more in detail; as the early forming of right habits on sound principles seems 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 prac tice of the virtue required.-Humility, for instance, is less an act than a disposition of the 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 prominent 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, imA habit of attention patience and resentment. 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 elegancies 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 there.

fore, as the expense is no object, so the forbear- | .ance 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 splendor which may be attached to it. She will be rescued from the temptation to do wrong things for the sake of enjoy. ments 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 splendor 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 selfcontrol, in small as well as in great things in volves 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.

with an habitual victory over personal vanity and a turn to personal expense. The inferior and less striking virtues are the smaller pearls. which serve to string and connect the great ones.

An early and unremitting zeal in forming the mind to a habit of attention not only produces the outward expression of good breeding, as one of its incidental advantages, but involves, or ra ther creates, better qualities than itself; whik vacancy and inattention not only produce vulgar manners, but are usually the indication, if not of an ordinary, yet of a neglected understanding. To the habitually inattentive, books offer little benefit; company affords little improvement, while a self-imposed attention sharpens observation, and creates a spirit of inspection and inquiry, which often lifts a common understanding to a degree of eminence in knowledge, s gacity, and usefulness, which indolent or negli. gent genius does not always reach. A habit of attention exercises intellect, quickens discernment, multiplies ideas, enlarges the power of combining images and comparing characters, and gives a faculty of picking up improvement from circumstances the least promising; and gaining instruction from those slight but fre quently recurring occasions, which the absent and the negligent turn to no account. Scarcely any thing or person is so unproductive as not to yield some fruit to the attentive and sedulous collector of ideas. But this is far from being the highest praise of such a person; she, who early imposes on herself a habit of strict attention to whatever she is engaged in, begins to wage early war with wandering thoughts, useless reveries, and that disqualifying train of busy, but unprofitable imaginations, by which the idle are occupied, and the absent are absorbed. She who keeps her intellectual powers in action, studies with advantage, herself, her books, and the world. Whereas they, in whose undisciplined minds vagrant thoughts have been suffered to range without restriction on ordinary occasions, will find they cannot easily call them home, when wanted to assist in higher duties. Thoughts, which are indulged in habitual wandering, will not be readily restrained in the solemnities of public worship or of private devotion.

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 sur- But in speaking of the necessary habits, it mounted one of the most domineering tempta- must be noticed that the habit of unremitting tions which assail the sex. While this seemingly industry, which is indeed closely connected with little circumstance, if neglected, and the oppo- those of which we have just made mention, cansite habit formed, may be the first step to every not be too early or too sedulously formed. Let successive error, and every consequent distress. not the sprightly and the brilliant reject indusThose women who are ruined by seduction in try as a plebian quality, as a quality to be exerthe lower classes, and those who are made mi- cised only by those who have their bread to earn, serable by ambitious marriages in the higher, or their fortune to make. But let them respect will be more frequently found to owe their mi- it, and adopt it as an habit to which many ele. sery to an ungoverned passion for dress and vated characters have, in a good measure, owed show, than to motives more apparently bad. An their distinction. The masters in science, the habitual moderation in this article, growing out leaders in literature, legislators, and statesmen, of a pure self-denying principle, and not arising even apostles and reformers would not, at least from the affectation of a singularity, which may in so eminent a degree, have enlightened, conhave more pride in it, than others feel in the in-verted, and astonished the world, had they not dulgence of any of the things which this singularity renounces, includes many valuable advantages. Modesty, simplicity, humility, economy, prudence, liberality, charity, are almost inseparably, and not very remotely, connected

been eminent possessors of this sober and unostentatious quality. It is the quality to which the immortal Newton modestly ascribed his own vast attainments; who, when he was asked by what means he had been enabled to make that