and more resisting, will bring a different sensation to your face. Stand still and turn in all directions, and if there is an open door a slight current of air will indicate the fact. If you are in a boat, you will know by the way in which the air strikes your face not only in what direction you are going, but whether the current is carrying you forward slowly or rapidly. These observations, and a thousand others like them, can not well be made save at night. However attentive we might wish to be to them. in broad daylight, we are aided or distracted by the sight, and they will escape us. And still we are not yet aided in this either by hands or ears. How much ocular knowledge we may acquire through the sense of touch, even without touching anything!

Children should have many sports by night. This advice is more important than it seems. The night naturally frightens men, and sometimes animals. Reason, knowledge, intelligence, courage, relieve but few people from paying this tribute. I have seen logicians, strongminded men, philosophers, and soldiers, who were intrepid by day, tremble at night like women at the rustling of a leaf. We attribute this affright to the tales told by nurses, but we are mistaken; it has a natural cause. What is this cause? The same which makes the deaf distrustful and the people superstitious—ignorance of the things which surround us and of what takes place about us. Accustomed to perceive objects at a distance, and to foresee their impressions in advance, how, no longer seeing any. thing of that which surrounds me, should I not imagine that there are a thousand beings and a thousand movements which may harm me, and against which it is impossible for me to protect myself? It is to no purpose that I am secure in the place where I happen to be, for I can never know it as well as though I actually saw it; and so

I always have a subject of fear which I did not have in broad daylight. I know it is true that a foreign body can hardly act upon my own without announcing itself by some noise; and so my sense of hearing is always on the alert. At the least sound, whose cause I can not discern, anxiety for my safety makes me at once imagine everything that is most suitable for keeping me on my guard, and consequently everything which is most likely to frighten me.

We have a key to the remedy of an evil when we have found its cause. In all cases habit destroys imagination; it is only new objects which excite it. In those which we see every day, it is no longer the imagination which is at work, but the memory; and in this fact we have an explanation of the axiom ab assuetis non fit passio, for it is only from the fire of the imagination that the passions are kindled. Therefore do not reason with one whom you would cure of the horror of darkness; but take him often into dark places, and you may be sure that this practice is worth more than all the arguments of philosophy. Tilers on roofs do not become dizzy, and no one who is accustomed to being in darkness is any longer afraid of it.

Here, then, is an additional argument for our sports by night; but in order that these sports may be successful, I can not too strongly recommend that they may be full of glee. Nothing is so cheerless as darkness. Never shut up your child in a black-hole. Let him laugh as he goes into the darkness, and let him laugh again when he comes out of it; so that, while he is in it, the thought of the amusements which he has left, and of those which he is going to renew, may protect him from the fantastic imaginations which might come to haunt him there.

I have known people who would resort to surprises in

order to accustom children not to be frightened at anything in the night. This is a very bad method, for it produces an effect directly contrary to the one intended, and serves only to make them always the more timorous. Neither reason nor habit can overcome the idea of a present danger of which we can know neither the degree nor the kind, nor the fear of surprises which have often been experienced. Nevertheless, how can you make sure of always keeping your pupil exempt from such accidents? The best advice I can give for preserving him from them is the following: Your case, I will say to my Emile, seems to be that of a just defense; for the aggressor does not allow you to judge whether he intends to do you harm or to frighten you; and as he has the advantage of you, you can not escape even by flight. Then boldly lay hold of whatever surprises you in the night, it matters not whether man or beast. Close with him and pinion him with all your strength. If he fights, strike him, and be not sparing of your blows; and whatever he may say or do, never let him go till you fully know what the object is. The clearing up of the mystery will doubtless show you that there was not much to fear; but this manner of treating jokers ought to discourage them from repeating their tricks.

Always arm men against unforeseen accidents. Let Emile spend his mornings in running barefoot in all seasons around his chamber, up and down stairs, and through the garden. Far from scolding him for this, I shall imitate him; only I shall take care to remove broken glass. I shall presently speak of his employments and manual recreations. However, let him learn to make all the steps which favor the evolution of the body, and in all his attitudes to take an easy and firm position. Let him learn to make jumps, how long, how high; to climb a tree,

to leap a wall. Let him always find his equilibrium ; and let all his movements and gestures be regulated according to the laws of gravity, long before the science of statics intervenes to explain them to him. From the manner in which his foot rests on the ground, and his body on his leg, he should feel whether the position is good or bad. A secure position is always graceful, and the firmest postures the most elegant. Were I a dancingmaster, I would not perform all the tricks of Marcel,* though well enough for the country where he teaches them; but instead of occupying my pupil forever with gambols, I would take him to the base of a rock and there show him what attitude he must take, how he must carry his body and his head, what movement he must make, and how he must place first his foot and then his hand, in order to follow nimbly the steep, rugged, and uneven pathways, and to spring from point to point both in ascending and in descending. I would make of him the rival of a roe-buck rather than the dancer of the opera.

Whatever gives movement to the body without putting restraint upon it, is always easy to obtain from children. There are a thousand ways of interesting them in measuring, ascertaining, and estimating distances. Here is a very tall cherry-tree: how shall we proceed in order to pick cherries from it? Will the ladder in the barn answer the purpose ? Here is a very wide brook: how shall we cross it? Will one of the planks in the yard reach from bank to bank? From our windows we would fish in the moat that surrounds the castle: how many feet long shall our line be? I would make a swing between these two trees: will a rope twelve feet long answer the purpose? I am told that in the other house our chamber will be twenty

* A celebrated dancing-master of Paris.

five feet square: do you think it will suit us? Will it be larger than this? We are very hungry: which of these two villages could we the sooner reach for dinner?

It was once my duty to train in running an indolent and sluggish child who had no inclination for that exercise or for any other, although he was destined for the life of a soldier. He had become convinced—I do not know how that a man of his rank ought neither to do anything nor to know anything, and that his nobility ought to serve him instead of arms and legs, as well as of every species of merit. The skill of Chiron himself would hardly suffice to make of such a gentleman a light-footed Achilles. The difficulty was so much the greater because I had resolved to enjoin absolutely nothing upon him. I had excluded all resort to exhortations, promises, threats, emulation, and the desire to excel. How could I give him a desire to run without saying anything to him? To run myself might be a means somewhat uncertain, and subject to difficulties. Moreover, it was a further purpose of mine to draw from this exercise some object of instruction for him, in order to accustom the operations of the machine and those of the judgment to move always in concert. This is the plan that occurred to me-- -that is, to him who speaks in this example. On going out to walk with him in the afternoon I sometimes put in my pocket two cakes of a kind that he liked very much. Each of us ate one of these during the walk, and we returned well pleased. One day he noticed that I had three cakes. He could have eaten six without inconvenience, and promptly dispatched his own, only to demand of me the third. No, I said to him; I could eat it very well myself, or we might divide it; but I prefer to see those two little boys yonder run a race for it. I called them, showed them the cake, and stated the terms. They asked nothing better.