days, you should still carry on their education. This you may do by providing them with periodical papers, with instructive and entertaining books, with the privileges of public lectures, and with your own experience and instructive conversation. Strive to give your children a taste for knowledge, a love of home and study, and a relish for intellectual and moral improvement. You should love knowledge yourself, and set a good example in the cultivation of the heart and mind. If you are not fond of reading, it is not likely your children will be-if you do not find pleasure in knowledge, your children will suppose it has no enjoyment for them. You should show them the necessity and the advantage of knowledge. Let them see the application of what they do know; and let there always be an increased desire to know more.

Your own happiness may depend upon the education of your children. Why is it that so many young men consider home a burden? Why do so many assemble in vicious places for amusement? Why is company their ruin, and society a snare? Because they have never been educated to the love of knowledge; because they have no pleasure in the society of intelligent and virtuous men. If you wish to keep your children from the temptations of a wicked world, from its schools of iniquity and vice, which are open in every place, let them have such an education that they may find pleasure in themselves. Let them not be dependent for happiness on the gratification of their senses; let them

not be fitted only for the company of the ignorant and the corrupted. The reason why young men are so prone to low and grovelling pleasures is, their minds are not cultivated. A taste for useful knowledge would exclude the taste for dissipation; and the gratification of mind would be cheaper as well as happier. If children were taught to think, and assisted to discover materials for thought, they would find a pleasure in the exercise of their rational faculties far exceeding the gross pleasures of animal indulgence. If your children were taught to enjoy this pleasure, and were furnished with the means of obtaining it, by books of an interesting and useful character, and by sensible and rational conversation, home would be rendered attractive, and they would not feel the necessity of roving abroad in search of something to amuse them. If they were trained to habits of reflection, they would not run into so many evils from mere thoughtlessness. If they were taught the value of useful knowledge, they would not waste their time in the perusal of those works of fiction with which the world is flooded, and which are so dangerous in their tendency: dangerous from the erroneous views they give of real life, the corrupt sentiments they often contain, and the fascinating attractions with which they surround vice and crime. An expensive education is not necessary. It is such an education as you can give them in your district school and at your own fire-side. If you will begin early with your children, and teach them to think,

and inquire into the reason of things, you will find abundant means and materials within your reach for such mental cultivation as is here intended.

A child that grows up in ignorance and in vicious habits is not only helpless, but hopeless. A child that grows up intelligent and virtuous will not only be happy, but will render all so within his influence. How delightful it must be to parents to see their offspring growing up around them, learned, cheerful, and happy in themselves, and increasing the happiness of all with whom they have intercourse. But, O how painful to see your children ignorant, dissipated, and wretched within themselves, and wherever they go blasting the happiness of others! They will be either the one or the other, in a great measure, according to the education you give them. Their characters are formed by education. There may be some difference in children naturally, owing to a difference of constitutional temperament; but it is believed that difference of early training makes the great difference observable in after-life. The Bible says, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." And to the parent who neglects to do this duty, Jehovah says, "Seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I also will forget thy children."

The education of your children, likewise, is a duty to your country. You are under the strongest obligations to prepare your offspring for becoming intelligent, useful citizens. A freeman must be an

intelligent man; and this government, wise as it is, cannot make your children free, unless you first make them intelligent. You had better place your children in another land, where others will govern them, unless you prepare them for governing themselves. But, as you intend them to be members of this republic, which is based on intelligence, sustained by intelligence, and looks to intelligence for its protection and safeguard, you are under the most solemn obligations, if you love your country and value its blessings, to make your children intelligent. To permit a son unable to read to go to the polls, is as great an injury as you can do your country. It is, in fact, as far as his vote and influence go, as great a crime as you could commit towards these free institutions. In a despotic government ignorance is the best quality in the people, but a free government demands virtue and intelligence; it cannot prosper, it cannot exist, without them. Then, if you desire the perpetuity of your liberties, the equal rights and privileges of these free institutions, and the honour and glory of your happy country, educate your children; fit them for enacting, administering, and obeying their own laws. Unless you do this you are not your country's friend. You are also bound, and bound by ties stronger than any other, to make your children happy. It is true, you love your children; you wish them every blessing; you would not see them suffer a single hour. Yes, you feel probably quite enough concerned as to what they shall eat,

wants.

and what they shall drink, and wherewithal they shall be clothed. And it may be that you feel sufficiently concerned to have them successful in the world, and prosperous in their temporal affairs. But food and clothing are not the extent of their Neither will wealth or honour make them happy. Real enjoyment, true happiness, depends upon the mind; and the mind is formed by education. Then, if you in the least neglect the cultivation of their minds and hearts, you cannot act the part of affectionate parents. You wish your children to be the companions of the wise and good, but unless they are learned and moral they will be unfit for such society. You wish them happy whether in prosperity or adversity; then prepare them, by a proper education, to find happiness within themselves. It is exercising the mind, and placing the affections on things worthy of the immortal soul, that will give them satisfaction. It is not sensual gratification that makes MAN happy, it is thought and love.

But you are not only to prepare your children for transacting the business of life, but to act upon, and educate other immortal beings. Your children will have influence upon others; they are made for society, and cannot live alone: their influence will be felt by all with whom they have intercourse; even when they shall not aim at exerting an influence upon others, it may not be less sensibly felt. If their minds are so formed that they can be happy themselves, they will contribute to the hap