ELEMENTS

OF

A LIBERAL EDUCATION

AND A FRUIT THEREOF.

*GANGANELLI ON EDUCATION,

In a Letter to a Tuscan Gentleman, his Friend, who had besought his Advice concerning the Education of his Children.

THE

HE education which, my dear Sir, you might give to your children, would be no more than a varnish, unless religion were its base. There are many moments of trial in the course of our journey through life, wherein the probity of the human heart is hardly sufficient to bear it up against the temptations it is every where encountering; and to which it would feel disposed degenerately to yield, without the awe which is impressed on the soul by a certain sense and conviction of its immortality.

Man must, to be happy and wise, even from the dawnings of perception, be taught to see and know God to be the first and final cause of every thing: his reason and his faith should constantly inform him that he is only superior to brutes by his reason and his faith! that to have neither law nor doctrine, is to be confounded with the condition of brutes: he must be given to understand "that one great truth prevailing over the world, there can be but one religion," and he should be directed and

Pope, by the name of Clement XIV.

compelled into the way of that truth, that the errors of the igno rant and the sophisms of the wicked, may not confound him in a chaos of uncertainty.

It is not by too strict and minute attention to ceremonies and forms that your children can be made good Christians. Christianity is equally at variance with pharisaic ostentations and heathenish superstitions. The church hath ordained sufficient rules of duty, without requiring overdoings. We are apt to neglect what is truly precept for effusions of vain opinion, because the heart will incline to ostentations of whim, rather than to the severities of reason and plain sense and moreover, because there is something in a singularity of demeanour, more suiting with our pride, than in the sober forms of decency and decorum.

You will take great care to elevate the souls of our young men, and convince them, that the greatest pleasure of life is to feel and reflect upon the nature of our being. No sentiment is so sublime no joy so delectable: no feast so voluptuous! To such a degree do I consider it is a blessing, that not to be sensible of its charm, a man must be lost to all the proper feelings of life; he must be an apathist, incapable of all idea of felicity.

The Catechism may suffice to instruct them of the revealed truths; but in this age of incredulity, more is wanting than the alphabet of religion. You will be mindful, therefore, to inculcate in their hearts, those pure ineffable truths, by which alone the mind is enabled to discriminate between them, and the clouds of modern pretension: that armed thus with the armour of light, they may have strength to reject and dispel the errors of corruption.

Few books, but sound, will make your sons enlightened Christians. They will read them with religious attention, less to imprint them in their memories, than to engrave them on their hearts.

It is not our aim so much to enable them to defend a theme, as to qualify them with notions of reasonable beings; such, we say, as will lead them to an acknowledgment of the eternal truths.

When youth have studied religion by the great fundamental principles of religion; the evidence of things! there will then be no danger of their being led astray by the sophisms of the wicked: it cannot happen then, but from the corruption of the heart.

You will be very watchful, therefore, to preserve them from all stain not by employing of spies and reporters, but by being every where yourself, in imitation of the great Father of All; who is not seen, but seeth every thing.

Children should by no means discover that they are observed and mistrusted, or it may bear upon the ingenuousness of their temper, and dispose their mind to complaint. They will be thus led to conceive an aversion for those whom they ought indispensably to love. They will fear to be doing wrong, when their intention and meaning is to be doing right; and their conduct will, in consequenoe, be reserved and sly. This, generally speaking, is the source of that diffidence observable in most school boys and students when called into action; and which makes them never so happy as when away from their superiours.

Be less a master to your children than a friend, and they will be transparent to your eyes; they will even tell you of their faults. Many and many times have boys confided their troubles and their truants to me, because they knew that I should treat them with indulgence. When they find that all your concern about them is for their good, and that from that motive alone you chasten and correct them, they will open their inmost heart

to you,

There are many reasons to induce me to recommend a domestic education for your children, and still many more to dissuade

me from it. Domestic education is generally the best and surest guardian of their morals; but hath in it something so languid, so uniform, so inanimate, as to stagnate all spirit of emulation. Having also another tendency, which I fear most; as it observeth too closely, its effect is rather to make hypocrites of our young men, than liberal and useful citizens.

If however a preceptor is to be found, who, aware of these objections, master of himself; patient, meek, enlightened; possessing understanding to blend firmness with condescension; temperance with cheerfulness; wisdom with gaiety; then, my advice would be to prefer this mode; persuaded that you would do nothing independently of him, nor assume over him any right of controul: there being indeed but too many fathers who consider a preceptor as a mere mercenary, whom they have a right, as they suppose, because they pay him, to command.

Never trust your children with a man in whose integrity you cannot as surely confide as in your own; but that resolved, leave him entirely to the choice of his own measures and operations. Nothing can more disgust a man of understanding, than to perceive a want of confidence in his judgment and integrity, or any doubt of his competency to the task he has assumed: and take particular care that the servants about your children be of sober character and demeanour; for it is through these that the hearts of our youth are most commonly contaminated.

Contrive to have always an amiable serenity overspreading your frout, and complacency beaming from your eye: so will your desires be, without reserve or fear, complied with. None are pleased with the lowering of the storm; but most are allured by the charm of a clear unclouded sky.

Let every species of application proposed for the instruction: of your children be so ordered as to embrace some honourable gratification; inciting thereby an arduous thirst of knowledge;

and inculcating at the same time a proper sense of the shame and reproach which will attach infallibly upon the man, who shall continue to drag on his life in the ever to be deplored want of

it.

You must be mindful to intersperse the hours of study with frequent intervals of recreation, that the spirits of our youth may not be over tired, nor their memory oppressed. When application is forced, it commonly produceth disgust, and a consequent aversion for books, which is as commonly followed by a love of dissipation.

Instruct, not enforcing by punishment, but by inciting a desire and love of instruction; to which end be attentive always to intermix with their exercises, traits of history, and lively sallies of wit; occasionally alternated as necessary to refresh and engage their attention. I knew a young gentleman at Milan, so truly attached to his studies, as to take his vacations upon no other pretence than as necessary relaxations to the naturally exhaustible vigour of the mind: but regretting the while as unprofitably wasted. His books were his treasure and his delight: and it was a good priest who, by a flow of gaiety, and neverfailing fecundity of imagination, had rooted in him this taste for works of erudition. He would have been the ornament of his age, if death had not prematurely and fatally put an end to his career. Let the studies you design for your children be adapted to their age, and care not to surprise the world with metaphysicians of twelve years old. Such are only parrots, doing what nature had never designed for them; like forward fruit, of grateful seeming, but of no taste; promising, but hardly ever performing.

The Sciences may be compared to the aliments of life: a tender stomach must be nourished simply; it is only by degrees