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No doubt the animal reaches its full development while the moral is still weak; but if the moral intuitions exist, as they undoubtedly do, at a very early age, it is for parents to make them early the controlling power. Nature forbids their occupying the greater part of the child's life, but they may be felt as the purest and most real and precious portion of it.

Before the fifth year how many seeds are sown which future years, and distant ones, mature successively! How much fondness, how much generosity, what hosts of other virtues, courage, constancy, patriotism, spring into the father's heart from the cradle of his child! And does never the fear come over a man that what is most precious to him upon earth is left in careless or perfidious, in unsafe or unworthy hands? Does it never occur to him that he loses a son in every one of these five years?

Landor.

Youth with its Beauty and Grace, would really seem bestowed on us for some such reason as to make us partly endurable till we have time for becoming so of ourselves, without their aid, when they leave us. The sweetest child we all smile on for his pleasant want of the whole world to break up or suck in his mouth, seeing no other good in it he would be rudely handled by that world's inhabitants, if he retained those angelic infantine desires when he got six feet high, black and bearded; but little

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by little he sees fit to forego claim after claim on the world, puts up with a less and less share of its good as his proper portion. Browning.

The actual felicity realized at home, turns very much upon the idea which, from the first, parents entertain of it. The brighter is the conception, which at the commencement, we have formed of family happiness the more happiness shall we be likely to secure. The adage, “Oh, too happy! did you but know it," might often be applied to a family. The essential and incidental means of enjoyment within our reach are frequently lost sight of, or are but poorly improved. It may be well then to try to place in a more distinct point of view, the common means of family happiness. In the real world the stern motives of necessity, give, whether distinctly thought of or not, depth and intensity to the selfish principle. At home, whatever may be the measure of good for the whole, the sum is distributed without a thought of distinction between one and the other. Refined and generous emotions may thus have room to expand, and may become the fixed habits of the mind before any adverse principles have come in play. Home is a garden, highwalled towards the blighting northeast of selfish care. Isaac Taylor.

The recollection of a thoroughly happy childhood (other advantages not wanting) is the very best preparation, moral and intellectual, with which to encounter the duties

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and cares of real life. A sunshiny childhood is an auspicious inheritance, with which, as a fund, to commence trading in practical wisdom and active goodness. It is a great thing only to have known, by experience, that tranquil, temperate felicity is actually attainable on earth; and we should think so, if we knew how many have pursued a reckless course, because, or chiefly because, they early learned to think of Happiness as a chimera, and believed momentary gratifications to be the only substitute placed within the reach of man. Practical happiness is much oftener wantonly thrown away, than really snatched from us; but it is the most likely to be pursued, overtaken, and husbanded, by those who already, and during some considerable period of their lives, have been happy. To have known nothing but misery is the most portentous condition under which human nature can start on its course. Isaac Taylor.

Arnold wished his house to be "a temple of industrious Peace."

It is a curious phenomenon in human affairs, that some of those matters in which education is most potent, should have been among the least thought of as branches of it. What you teach a boy of Latin and Greek may be good; but these things are with him but a little time of each day in his after life. What you teach him of any bread-getting art may be of some import to him, as to the quantity and quality of bread he will get; but he is not always with his

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art. With himself he is always. How important, then, it is, whether you have given him a happy or a morbid turn of mind; whether the current of his life is a clear, wholesome stream, or bitter as Marah. The education to happiness is a possible thing not to a happiness supposed to rest upon enjoyments of any kind, but to one built upon content and resignation. This is the best part of philosophy. This enters into the "wisdom" spoken of in the Scriptures. Now it can be taught. The converse is taught every day and all day long.

Captiousness, sensitiveness, and a Martha-like care for the things of this world, are often the direct fruits of education. All these faults of the character, and they are among the greatest, may be summed up in a disproportionate care for little things. This is rather a growing evil. The painful neatness and exactness of modern life foster it. The tide of small wishes and requirements gains upon us fully as fast as we can get out of its way by our improved means of satisfying them. Now the unwholesome concern that many parents and governors manifest as to small things, must have a great influence on the governed. You hear a child reprimanded about a point of dress, or some trivial thing, as if it had committed a treachery. The criticisms, too, which it hears upon others are often of the same kind. Small omissions, small commissions, false shame, little stumblingblocks of offence, trifling grievances of the kind that Dr. Johnson, who had known hunger, stormed at Mrs. Thrale

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for talking about, are made much of; general dissatisfaction is expressed that things are not complete, and that every thing in life is not turned out as neat as a LongAcre carriage; commands are expected to be fulfilled by agents, upon very rapid and incomplete orders, exactly to the mind of the person ordering; these ways, to which children are very attentive, teach them in their turn to be querulous, sensitive, and full of small cares and wishes. And when you have made a child like this, can you make a world for him that will satisfy him? Tax your civilization to the uttermost; a punctilious, tiresome disposition expects more. Indeed, Nature, with her vague and flowing ways, cannot at all fit in with a right-angled person. Besides there are other precise angular creatures, and these sharp-edged persons wound each other terribly. Of all the things which you can teach people, after teaching them to trust in God, the most important is, to put out of their hearts any expectation of perfection, according to their notions, in this world.

A man who thus cares for little things has a garment embroidered with hooks, which catches at every thing that passes by. He finds many more causes of offence than other men; and each offence is a more bitter thing to him than to others.

Therefore, as a man lives more with himself than with art, science, or even with his fellows, a wise teacher, intending to make a happy-minded man of his pupil, will try to lay a groundwork of divine contentment in him.

Helps.