with the optimism of nature; for whenever we get this vantage ground of the past, or of a wiser mind in the present, we are able to discern that we are begirt with spiritual laws which execute themselves. Love should make joy, but our benevolence is unhappy. Our Sunday Schools, Churches, and Pauper Societies, are yokes to our neck. We pain ourselves to please nobody. Do not (says this far-seeing man) shut up the young people against their will in a pew, and force the children to answer questions for an hour, against their will. We pass in the world for sects and schools, for erudition and piety; and we are all the time jejune babes." Well may Emerson affirm-"There is no permanent wise man, except in the figment of the stoics." Who has belief and love? A believing love will relieve us of á vast load of care. The whole course of things goes to teach us faith-that faith that worketh by love. We need only obey. Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations. The premature wisdom of youth resembles the forced fruit of our hothouses; it looks like a natural production, but has not its flavour and raciness. In Lamartine's Memoirs of my Youth, he remarks"My mother displayed little anxiety about what is generally called instruction. She did not aspire to make me a child far advanced in my age. She did not arouse within me that emulation which is only the jealousy or the pride of children. She did not compare me to any person. She neither exalted nor humiliated me by any dangerous com parisons. She thought—and justly-that once my intellectual strength was developed by age, and by health of body and mind, I should learn as easily as others the little Greek, and Latin, and figures, of which is composed that empty modicum of letters which is called an education. What she wished was, to make me a happy child, with a healthy mind and a loving soul; a creature of GOD, and not a puppet of men. She had drawn her idea of education at first from her own heart, and then from the works of Rousseau and St. Pierre,-those two favourite philosophers of women, because they are philosophers of feeling. And now for her discernment. She did not confound what is suitable to be taught to princes, placed by their birth and their wealth at the summit of the social scale, with that which is suitable to be taught to the children of the poor and obscure family, placed close to the scenes of Nature, in the modest conditions of labour and simplicity. But what she thought was, that in all the conditions of life, it is necessary first to make a MAN, and when the man is made, —that is to say, a being intelligent, sensible, and placed in first relations to himself, to other men, and to GoD,-it matters little whether he is a prince or a workman, be he that which he ought to be. What he is, is good, and his mother-work is accomplished. My education was a philosophical education at second-hand;-that is to say, a philosophical education corrected and softened by a mother's feelings. Physically, the education was taken a good deal from the teachings of Pythagoras and Emilius." Madame L. took advantage of instinct, which reasons better within us than logic. Her system was not an art, but E a labour of love-that love which is its own lever, fulcrum, and power; and this is the reason why it was infallible. "What she attached the greatest importance to, was to direct my thoughts unceasingly to GOD, and to give life and energy to these thoughts by implanting in my soul the omnipresence of GoD, so that my religion became a pleasure to me, and my faith a communion with the invisible." How many are indebted to a mother for the implanting of this feeling! The death of a mother-such as the humble writer once had-creates a void never to be supplied. She was indeed the mainspring in the machine by which each separate part was indirectly impelled and regulated. Her superiority was not in head, but in the soul. It is indeed in the heart GOD has placed the genius of woman, because the works of this genius are all labours of love. Had poor Byron been blessed with such a mother, he would not have prostituted his noble and magnificent talents to ignoble purposes. How applicable are the following lines of the great poet to himself: "The thorns I planted, they have torn me, and I bleed; -Childe Harold. Byron wanted the apathy peculiar to old age, which is good substitute for patience. A lady of sanguine temperament, of a swift and arrowy sharpness of tongue, cannot fail of transmitting a portion of her caloric to her children. "It is a general rule, to which," says a French writer, Michelet, "I have hardly ever seen any exception, that superior men are always the sons of their mother. She has stampt upon them and they reproduce-her moral as well as her physical features." The mother alone is patient enough to develope the young creature, by taking proper care of his liberty. We must be on our guard, and not place the child, still too weak and pliable, in the hands of strangers. People of the best intentions, by pressing too much upon him, run the risk of so crushing his faculties that he will never be able to enjoy the free use of them again. The world is full of men who remain bondsmen all their life, from having borne a heavy load too soon. A too solid and too precocious education has injured something within them; their originality, the genius, the ingigno, which is the prime part of man. Who respects in these days the original and free ingenuity of character that sacred genius which we receive at our birth? This is the obnoxious part which offends"This boy is not like every boy else." The Solomons of modern days shake their heads, "What is this? we never saw the like!" Shut him up quickly-stifle this living flower; here are the iron cages. Ah! you were blooming and displaying your luxuriant foliage in the sun, Be wise and prudent, O flower! become dry and sapless; shut up your leaves. The tree becomes stunted-nay, dead, and may never bear leaf more. What is the end and aim of education but to make him a rational being? to keep him in tune with what surrounds him; to give him a good physical stamina, a sustaining power to bear the rubs and thumps which amongst a jarring concourse of atoms is inevitable to be his doom, if he plays even a low part in the great concert of life; checking what is irregular and excessive in his lively sallies,— preventing his vibrating between the sublime and the ridiculous,—as well as giving him a nervous system and a vital force, that when he is assailed either by a gust of favour, or a current of idle scandal, the wind of public opinion," blowing where it listeth," whether from the bleak east, or emollient west, he may be enabled to rough it, and steer his course right onwards; and whatever be the revolutions of life, he need have no fear of falling, when he has taken his seat on the lowest step. Such a one never falters from his allegiance to his GoD and the inward monitor; and if he become a philosopher of the right stamp, GOD's secretary within hourly informs him that happiness depends upon the will. A truce to the trammels of the riding schools and the express trains! The young eagle does not attempt to fly until its pinions are grown. Let then your youth breathe the vital air of liberty until his brain and muscles are ripe for action, and then develope them gradually; do not exact uniform duties; vary them, and adapt them to the ever-changing organic sensations; and do this in the spirit of love, and you will have a man powerful in action, and fruitful in works, who may be endowed with will, power, and a creative genius. But may we humbly ask-Where is the enlarged and generous love that wishes to raise and set free? who love inequality, liberty, and intelligence? Our plan would be denounced as criminal: seemingly those only are worthy of esteem who surprise the soul by keeping it apart in |