might afford us many interesting facts. There is such a close connection between thought and speech, that the effect of their first association must be very important; and it would, therefore, be very useful to observe the influence of a polyglot education.

But, whatever may be thought of the desirableness of learning foreign languages, the habit of speaking their own correctly must always be of importance to children; and, when we neglect to secure this habit, by employing for the purpose the peculiar qualities of infancy, we commit an error, which, though not of the most serious nature, is not always easily corrected by subsequent education. This was not a fault with which the ancients could be reproached; indeed the pains which they took to improve the enunciation of their children, even in infancy, would, perhaps, appear to us frivolous and pedantic. But such pains would often be well bestowed in correcting the bad effect of example, especially in places where the pronunciation and idiom are equally vicious. It is not merely a question as to what is agreeable; nor can any thing be considered as frivolous which is connected with the most powerful means of influencing the imagination. Speech is the outward expression of the soul; and affords us the means of exercising the most unbounded power over the morality and happiness of others.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

ON THE HABITS FORMED AT TWO YEARS OLD.

*

It has been remarked by Locke, that children are so apt to forget any rules which may be laid down for their conduct, that the performance of such things as are absolutely necessary must be insisted on till it becomes a confirmed habit, entirely independent of the memory." Our great object should be to influence the character of children, while it is offered to us in its simple purity. Too soon shall we find it altered and deteriorated; and be no longer able to distinguish what is natural from what has been acquired. Children soon become in some degree ashamed of their little singularities. They conceal, or restrain, those feelings in which they are aware that we shall not sym

* Remember children are not to be taught by rules, which will be always slipping out of their memories. What you think necessary for them to do, settle in them by an indispensable practice as often as the occasion returns, and if it be possible make occasions.-Locke on Education.

pathize; and they endeavour to find out what impressions they are expected to receive. But notwithstanding this first deviation from nature, the characteristic features of this age are not effaced so soon as we are apt to imagine; traces of them, though often unnoticed, remain for some time. We are still living with a little uncivilized being, who may perhaps have been brought into some slight training as to outward demeanour, but all the workings of whose mind cannot be understood by us, unless we have carefully studied him from the hour of his birth.

This study, however, is not so easy as it might at first sight appear. Before children can speak, their whole life appears a scene of confusion: their manner of feeling, of connecting ideas, and comparing them together, differs so entirely from ours, that we can neither understand nor explain it; and thus they present us with a problem equally interesting and incapable of solution. At a more advanced period, when our means of communicating with them are increased, and they might themselves be able to throw some light on the subject, the difference between them and us is no longer so decidedly marked, and the child, in appearance at least, already too much resembles the man. We have, then, one short interval which is more instructive to the observer than any other that in which real infancy still exists, undisguised and open to

our view

the period from two years old to four. At this age children are as yet unguarded in their feelings and expressions; and their natural instincts, still in their first vigour, seem to be developed with their increasing strength; while their newly acquired power of speech, and the greater number and variety of their actions, serve as interpreters to those feelings and instincts. Our social condition is, however, still little understood by them, and they might be inhabitants of any other world as well as of ours. But to mark how they insensibly adopt our ideas -how their violent and impetuous will learns by degrees to submit to the control of reason and example how their young faculties, according to their several natures, and assisted by the first glimmerings of conscience, combine to raise a feeling of moral responsibility in the breast, would furnish most interesting and curious subjects for observation; revealing to us a beautiful dispensation of Providence,-a design which has only to be understood, in order to be admired and reverenced.

Following the natural order of time, we shall first consider that period when the mind has not yet acquired any power over itself; when the will, however eager and lively it may appear, is, in fact, a passive agent, yielding to the strongest inclination, and obeying a blind impulse. At this time we govern children by means of those

habits which our attention and regularity have,

naturally generated. But this method, though gentle in its nature, and always to be made use of in some degree, is rather too mechanical to be the only one employed. Habits there must be ; and these habits must be either favourable or unfavourable to our plans of education. Their formation is prevented only by an unequal and capricious conduct on our part; and the example of such a conduct would assuredly be soon imitated by our children.

Though the remark may appear paradoxical, it is I believe true, that the younger an infant is, the more do its habits relate to its moral existence. As it does not yet act independently, it can only be accustomed to foresee: it expects a certain succession of events, and its habits

consist only in hopes and fears. We do not, therefore, observe it thoughtlessly performing a series of actions, like a piece of machinery; but its desires, its tastes, and its character, are all influenced by its hopes and fears. It is only at a later period, when the active powers are developed, and the pleasure attached to certain exercises of them begins to wear off, that the mind is able to remain unconcerned, and, as it were, hardly aware of those very actions in which it had at first taken so lively an interest. Habits have not, therefore, in very early infancy, the disadvantage, which seems almost