certain confidence, and to a certain extent demand their assistance and advice, but not so as to convey a falsehood to their minds, or make them conceive they have accomplishments which they have

not.

In early youth there must perhaps be some subjection of the pupil to the mere will of his superior. But even then the friend need not be altogether lost in the parent. At a certain age the parental character should perhaps be wholly lost. There is no spectacle that more forcibly extorts the approbation of the human mind, than that of a father and child, already arrived at years of discretion, who live together like brethren. There is no more unequivocal exhibition of imbecility, than the behaviour of a parent who, in his son now become a citizen at large, cannot forget the child; and who exercises, or attempts to exercise, an unseemly authority over him. The state of equality, which is the consummation of a just education, should for ever be borne in mind. should always treat our children with some deference, and make them in some degree the confidents of our affairs and our purposes. We should extract from them some of the benefits of friendship, that they may one day be capable of becoming friends in the utmost extent of the term. We should respect them, that they may respect themselves. We should behold their proceedings with

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the eyes of men towards men, that they may learn to feel their portion of importance, and regard their actions as the actions of moral and intelligent beings.

ESSAY XIV.

OF THE OBTAINING OF CONFIDENCE.

THERE is no problem in the subject of education more difficult and delicate of solution, than that which relates to the gaining the confidence, and exciting the frankness of youth.

This is a point perhaps that is never to be accomplished by austerity; and which seems frequently to refuse itself to the kindest and most equitable treatment.

There is an essential disparity between youth and age; and the parent or preceptor is perhaps always an old man to the pupil. Their dispositions and their pursuits are different; their characters, their studies and their amusements must always be considerably unlike. This disparity will probably be found, however paradoxical the assertion may appear, to be increased in proportion to the frequency of their intercourse. A parent and a preceptor have of all human beings the least resemblance to children. Convert one young

person into a sort of superintendent and director to his junior, and you will see him immediately. start up into a species of formalist and pedant. He is watching the conduct of another; that other has no such employment. He is immersed in foresight and care; the other is jocund and careless, and has no thought of to-morrow. But what is most material, he grows hourly more estranged to the liberal sentiments of equality, and inevitably contracts some of the vices that distinguish the master from the slave.

Rousseau has endeavoured to surmount this difficulty by the introduction of a fictitious equality. It is unnecessary perhaps to say more of his system upon the present occasion, than that it is a system of incessant hypocrisy and lying.

The end proposed in the problem we are examining is of inestimable importance.

How shall I form the mind of a young person unless I am acquainted with it? How shall I superintend his ideas, and mould his very soul, if there be a thousand things continually passing there, of which I am ignorant? The first point that a skilful artificer would study, is the power of his tools, and the nature of his materials. Without a considerable degree of knowledge in this respect, nothing will be produced but abortive attempts, and specimens that disgrace the operator.

The thoughts which a young person specially

regards as his personal property, are commonly the very thoughts that he cherishes with the greatest affection. The formal lessons of education pass over without ruffling a fibre of his heart; but his private contemplations cause his heart to leap, and his blood to boil. When he returns to them, he becomes a new creature. He casts the slough of sedentary confinement; he resumes that elasticity of limb which his fetters had suspended. His eye sparkles; he bounds over the sod, as the young roe upon the mountains. His moments of restraint being gone, the boy becomes himself again.

The thoughts of childhood indeed, though to childhood they are interesting, are in themselves idle and of small account. But the period advances, in which the case is extremely altered. As puberty approaches, the turn which the mind of a young person shall then take, may have the most important effects upon his whole character. When his heart beats with a consciousness that he is somewhat, he knows not what; when the inpatient soul spurns at that constraint, to which before it submitted without a murmur; when a new existence seems to descend upon him, and to double all that he was before; who then shall watch his thoughts and guide his actions? Happy for him, if this development of his nature is proportioned to the growth of his frame, and not forced on prematurely by some injurious associate.

This is a time when he is indeed in want of a pilot. He is now amidst shoals and quicksands, surrounded with dangers, on every side, and of denominations in the utmost degree varied. Yet this is a time when most of all he shuns the confidence of his superiors. If he were before in the utmost degree open and unreserved, and his thoughts always flowed unadulterated to his tongue, yet now shame suspends the communication, and he dares not commit his unfledged notions to the hearing of a monitor. He lights as a confident, upon a person, not less young, ignorant and inexperienced than himself; or, as it too frequently happens, his confident is of an imagination already debauched and depraved, who, instead of leading him with safety through untried fields, perpetually stimulates and conducts him to measures the most unfortunate.

It has sometimes been questioned whether such a confidence as is here alluded to, ought to be sought by the parent or preceptor, and whether the receiving it will not involve him in difficulties and uncertainties from which the wisest moralist cannot afterwards extricate himself, without injury to the pupil, and disgrace to himself. But surely it cannot reasonably be doubted that, where the pupil stands most in need of a wisdom greater than his own, it should be placed within his reach; and that there must, in the nature of

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