is permitted to bring free thinking to the service of faith, and use reason in inquiry; he is restricted by no premised results, but commanded to search into the evidences and to declare the meaning of truth; to investigate the connexion between the dispensations of God and the obligations of his creatures; between this palpable theatre of mortal action and the future state of moral, progressive, and retributive existence: all this must fix, strengthen, and give energy to reflection; must lead a man of vigorous conception to examine what is presented to him with peculiar discrimination, and induce a habit of analogical deduction almost as certain and safe as observation itself. The limitations of experience that we have mentioned as peculiar to the divine, however frequent, and in some degree inevitable, are not invariable, or to any great extent compulsory. The pulpit, the study, and the parochial visitation, do not completely confine the views of the clergyman; he may, and he often does, with decorum, partake of amusements, observe the political, legal, and commercial transactions of life, sufficiently to feel the passions which animate them, to understand the interests discussed in them, and to see the different degrees of blindness and intelligence, of generosity and selfishness, of moderation and excess, of happiness and misery, that mark the character and condition of this chequered being. The author of the volume from which we have so widely digressed, appears to have availed himself of all the resources of the profession. Books and reflection have aided his power of discernment, and benevolence tempers all his inferences and instructions. But because his heart is full of good will, he is not therefore blind; he never loses discrimination in charity, but bestows censure where censure is due, and correction where it is necessary; and like him who pitieth his children, and him who had the feeling of our infirmity, he regards human frailty with tenderness, and he exhorts the erring with much cogency and good nature; he looks abroad upon nature as the work of a Father, and regards all the family of that universal Parent as the offspring of love and the heirs of mercy, particularly blessed in moral endowments and privileges, and commanded by their interest as well as their honour, to the cultivation and expression of all good affections, to pity and forbearance, to equity and liberality, to courtesy and sympathy. He not only recommends the regulation of the feelings, but inculcates the virtues of industry and prudence, temperance and cheerfulness, we think, very happily, with brevity that never tires, with the fulness that excludes obscurity, and the vivacity that engages attention. He seldom repeats himself, and enforces his precepts with well-selected anecdotes and appropriate examples. His views are enlarged and distinct; he comprehends both extremes of a principle, understands the use and abuse of a privilege, and builds his theory of right and expediency upon the foundation of a middle path, neither demanding too many sacrifices nor too many efforts, but regulating selflove by extended knowledge, general interests, and moderate indulgences. He regards the age in which we live with that just discernment of its felicity, and that grateful sense of its improvements and advantages, that are truly edifying. We think we can trace a great affinity of principle and sentiment between him and the venerable Franklin: the same moderation and simplicity; the same freedom from all hardness and bitterness; the same protracted cheerfulness; the same mild, humorous satire, and almost the same sententious and expressive style of reproof and instruction characterize both. The remarks upon education are particularly valuable. Treatises upon this subject are abundant and excellent, but perhaps the very amplitude of them obstructs their utility. So much reasoning and so many comparative systems, seem to defy ordinary patience, and serve to justify the indolence that neglects this important subject, on account of the thinking which it requires; but a few striking facts and fundamental maxims, in a comprehensive form, are irresistible, and enforce a duty as much upon the heart as upon the understanding. The following observations are so just, that when they are uttered, they are immediately acknowledged as of the utmost importance, and yet most people act as if they never knew them: "Good education is the thing in the world the most important and desirable, but it is of wider scope than most people imagine. What is called learning is only a part of it, and so far from being the most essential part, it is but the husk. In vain will you employ your endeavours to educate your children, unless you give seed to the heart as well as the understanding; unless you make their moral frame the subject of your assiduous and well directed care; unless you take at least as much pains to make them well principled, and of virtuous man ners, as to make them shine in learning and accomplishments: for intellectual improve ment, if their morals be neglected, will tend to render them wise only to do evil. If you train up your boy to a strict regard to truth, honesty, and integrity, and to a deep reverence of all that is sacred; if you train him up in habits of industry, temperance, and love of order-it is then, and then only, you can reasonably expect that he will pass through the perilous crisis before him uncontaminated, and that his manhood will be crowned with honour." No. XXIV contains some very good thoughts upon the subsequent degeneracy of wonderful children. There is reason to believe, that children who exhibit extraordinary talent, are endowed with gifts, which, if suitably cherished and employed, would prolong a corresponding superiority through every stage of life; and that when they appear to sink prematurely to the common level, their distinguishing powers were either imaginary or adventitious, or have been blighted by negligence or mismanagement. Mr. Sampson supposes that vivacity is often presumed to be genius; that adulation frequently makes a child of parts "think himself too wise for instruction, and too important for advice;" and that a false dependence upon natural force of intellect, occasions the idleness and foolish self-confidence that ultimately obstruct the improvement of talent, and produce that disappointment of presumption which checks all future effort, and stops the misguided mind far short of its attainable, eminence. To those intrusted with precocious intellect he suggests these salutary truths. "The natural gifts of the mind are dealt out with a frugal hand; to none so abundantly as to supersede the necessity of mental labour; and to few so sparingly, that they may not, under the enjoyment of suitable means, and with well directed industry, attain to a respectable standing for knowledge, and whatever of difference there is between mankind in regard to the original powers of their minds, the most common and the greatest difference between them, arises from a diligent cultivation of these powers on the one hand, and a slothful neglect of them on the other. With respect to intellectual as well as to worldly treasure, it is the hand of the diligent that maketh rich; while the sluggard who neglects to cultivate and improve his mind, will find that mind, a wretched waste at the age of fifty, of however great promise it had been at the age of twenty." In No. XXX, "Of the brood of Idlers," some considerations are offered, with strict regard to the liberty of the citizen, and the welfare of the state, which we think worthy the attention of the civil authority. "As children in some sense or other, do actually belong to the community so it ought to be in the power, and made the duty of the political guardians of the public welfare, to see that they be brought up in such a manner that they may be likely to strengthen and adorn, rather than weaken and deprave society. For which reason, when idle profligate parents are manifestly leading their children in their own footsteps, they ought to be taken from the dominion of such unworthy parents, and be placed under the care of those who would accustom them to habits of virtuous industry. It would be an act of charity to the children themselves; and would give to the general community a vast number of sound and useful members, who, else would grow up to prey upon its earnings and poison its morals. If all suitable pains were taken with the rising generation to induce them to sober and industrious habits, by example, by the incitements of persuasion, and even by reasonable force, whenever force is necessary, the effects would be happy beyond measure. An infinite mass of mischief and crime would be prevented; the officers of justice would have little to do; our jails would, comparatively, be empty." The necessity of making children labour and think for themselves, the bad consequences of checking the operations of mind, and of anticipating the wants which the first efforts of strength and ingenuity can be taught to supply, are well enforced in No. XLVI. "The highest and most important part of the art of teaching, is to learn the young mind to think for itself, and to exercise and exert its faculties of judgment and understanding, as well as of memory; for these faculties grow and increase only by exercise. The less they are exercised in childhood the more feeble they come to be in manhood. And as children should be taught to think for themselevs; so also should they be inured to the exercise of those mixed faculties that call forth the exertion of the body and mind conjointly.. If children be made to help themselves as soon and as much as they are able, it wonderfully conduces to the improvement of their faculties, and has at the same time an auspicious influence upon their dispositions. Whereas if they be accustomed to have every thing done for them by others that others can do, the rust of sloth, and the canker of pride will be apt to spoil whatever nature has granted to them." No. XLIX, " Of teaching children to lie," announces rather a startling subject, which all moral persons, with good intentions, but without the capacity, or unaccustomed to the practice of calculating moral causes and consequences, will presume to be exclusively addressed to the extremest ignorance, or the most shameless depravity. But unhappily the ignorant and the profligate are not alone in the pernicious habit which is here reproved. Kind mothers, faithful servants, indulgent nurses, too often undermine the sacred love of truth, and often blunt all accurate perception of it. It was matter of astonishment to Mr. Locke who reasoned from the known influence of example and instruction, that all manner of vice did not more abound, that more licentiousness did not grow out of excessive indulgence, more revenge out of the retaliation inculcated in children, more habitual falsehood and blindness out of the deceptions they discovered, and the prejudices enjoined upon them. Common experience informs us how little integrity subsists in the intercourse between ས་ maturity and infancy; how many punishments are threatened which are never inflicted; how many disingenuous, halfpromises are given to repulse importunity, or from the want of authority; and how many absolute lies are uttered, to create a necessity for submission which ought to proceed from the habit of obedience. When the results of this management become obvious, when the child aims to conceal much that he does, and designs; when he learns to misrepresent almost every fact that comes to his knowledge, and to deny every fault he commits, then the history of his character is accounted for by a false theory-the natural propensity to lying. But those who kindly, and accurately observe children, know that though it is easy to make them lie, by direct command, it is not easy to make them understand a lie, or a fiction, as such. A child who heard the vulgar hyperbole "it rains cats and dogs," and who went to the window to see the prodigy; and another who asked her instructor, "should I write verses, would one of the muses come to teach me?" were genuine, though simple illustrations of the natural love of truth. Mr. Sampson justly imputes the habit of lying to injustice and excessive punishment. To prevent this evil he recommends that children be not led into this temptation; that those to whom they are entrusted, "be not overmuch prying and severe, in regard to the mere frailties common to childhood. Many things you must overlook, or der your government over your children not seem to observe, unless you would renboth odious and contemptible. Never deceive your children in word or deed. Neand every act of falsehood and equivocation ver fail to reprove them seriously for any, that you may find them guilty of; however much your vanity be flattered with the canning and dexterity of the little deceivers. Whenever they frankly own a fault, whilst you blame them for the fault, forget not to commend them for speaking the truth about it." The error" of overdoing in governing children" is further enforced in another place, and despotism shown to be as productive of error in individuals, as of un happiness in the state. Children brought up in fear do not love their parents. “Of some it breaks the spirits, and renders them unenterprising, tame and servile, in all the succeeding periods of their lives. Others, who have more native energy of mind, and stiffness of heart, it makes exceedingly restless: and whenever these can get aside from parental inspection, they are particularly rude and extravagant in their conduct. With longing eyes they look for ward to the day of emancipation from parental authority as to a jubilee; and when the wished-for time has come, they are like calves let loose from their stalls. The tran sition is so great and sudden that it wilders them; and it often happens that their ruin is involved in the first use they make of their freedom. The first step is to teach the infantile subject implicit obedience to parental authority; and then to rule with such moderation and sweetness, that it shall entirely love and trust the hand that guides it." No. LXXXIII, “Of the inquisitiveness of children" is a kind of petition for the little creatures who so often interrupt our arguments, and check the flights of matured imagination by ill-timed and reiterated inquiry, concerning things with which we have been so long acquainted, that we have forgotten our primitive ignorance, and feel as if these elements of truth were in fact inherent. But the faculty manifested by these simple questions indicates a principle, "whereby we are distinguishable even more skill. "But all this requires a considerable de-, gree of toil. It is by much the easier way, barely to give the child a lesson to learn by heart, and whip him if his memory fail, than to aid in enlightening and calarging his un It is no part of Mr. Sampson's system of moral discipline “to scold men out of their sins," to beat children, or excessively to mortify them. He justly remarks that "children, possessed of more than common susceptibility of shame, may be injured for life by putting that distressful feeling to a too severe trial; and others may be made shameless by shaming them too often; while a temper naturally stiff and unyielding, may be turned to revengeful, and made desperately malignant, by impressions of injustice and cruelty experienced in the season of childhood." This indulgent spirit is guarded from the extreme to which it is liable, in a subsequent essay on "the early and ardent desire of power." Of natural propensities, this cannot be denied to be one, and it may be admitted without depreciating the excellence of human nature, for while its abuse is the source of all the persecution and oppression, the extortion and bloodshed, which have called forth so many tears and curses in the world, it has compassed sea and land, unfolded the riches of nature, and distributed the products of art; has made the ignorant. wise, and the miserable glad. Thus arises a question on the bearing, which discipline should have on this predominant passion. "In weeding a garden we take great care, best with the weeds, we root up also some precious plant. In like manner should we endeavour to weed as it were, the faults out of the minds of our children; looking diligently that we neither spoil nor mar what eternal wisdom has planted in them, or any part of the natural constitution of their frame. If, then, the love of power be a part of the radical constitution of man, the proper method of education is not to eradicate, but to temper and curb it. The contentions of little children, first with their mothers, and afterwards with one another, are the germen, as it were, of the contentions of grown men, which fill the earth with violence and blood. 66 "If it were generally made a main part of education, (as assuredly it ought to be of "Over young minds, the law of love might be made to have a much more powerful influence than penal laws. Much more easily are they drawn and guided by their affections, than driven by their fears; the tenor of the former being spontaneous, steady, and uniform, while the latter operate only by occasional excitement. "You have the fastest hold of the child that you draw by the cords of love.' By these cords can you draw him with ease. Delighting to please, and of course dreading to offend you, it is in your power to imprint in his mind indelible characters; to weed out his wayward propensities; to awaken his emulation; to stimulate his industry; and to mould him to sentiments and habits preparatory to excellence in after life." The general diffusion of knowledge, as the foundation and security of virtue, the and as a means of enjoyment, is highly recommended throughout these essays; and yet, with such consistent qualification as to show that the principle of gradation and subordination is a truth which the author is earnest should be universally enforced, to prevent the repining of unreasonable discontent, to check the vain aspiring of moderate talent, and to excite in every man the proper exertion of his relative ability, and the careful cultivation of his peculiar resources. The trite dogma "a little learning is a dangerous thing," is shown to be a traditionary quotation, which, the times in which it originally became popular, the authority of its first assertor, and his particular application, often made proper enough a century ago, when pedantry and arrogance naturally grew out of general ignorance; but now that the attainments of reading and spelling correctly, and of speaking and writing grainmatically, are not the distinction of a few, no man's humility is |
