NATIONAL AND DOMESTIC EDUCATION. 269 



the vast aims that extend to future generations, and lead to oversight 

 of the present wants of existing worth. A fine theory is like a fine 

 temple, admired and worthy to be admired ; but it must be supported 

 on the pillars of practicability, and be applied to the purposes of ac- 

 tual usefulness. Give me the working moralist, that is exemplary in 

 the domestic and social relations of life, who can in these love in- 

 tensely and forbear generously, and I have some warrant that he can 

 apply these principles universally ; but the mere speculative moralist, 

 though he preaches the most beautiful of theories, is only like a bab- 

 bling stream that leaves its own banks and channels dry, for the glory 

 of contributing its petty waters to the vast ocean. 



Mr. Owen is himself an example of the futility of his diffusive 

 principle. Had he realized in the persons of one hundred children 

 his educational and co-operative theory, would he not, by giving 

 tangible evidence of its worth, have served his system, and it be a 

 good one, the world, infinitely more than by aiming, as he has done, 

 at the regeneration of the whole social system at once. Like the boy 

 with the filberts, he has grasped at too much, the consequence is, his 

 system sticks by the way, like the boy's hand in the neck of the jar, 

 which is vainly full of nuts, and unless he will condescend to take 

 only a few, and crack them one by one, will he never come at the 

 kernels. 



The homes of England are the altars of English virtue ; may their 

 fires never be extinguished ! May they ever be guarded by a mini- 

 stering priestess and priest, in the sacred characters of wife and hus- 

 band- 1 mother and father. I would have the chain of sympathy con- 

 nect these homes one with another; I would have domestic love 

 radiate into universal love; so that Avhenever a human being, no 

 matter from what clime or quarter of the globe, appeared, he should 

 find a warm welcome at the household hearth. But away with the 

 parallelogram marts of confusion, in which parents are not to recog- 

 nize their children, or children their parents. Let national educatiqn 

 throw open well-regulated colleges to the youth of both sexes, to 

 which their parents, when such is their pleasure, may have access to 

 hear lectures, &c. &c. But let infancy and childhood be left to those 

 to whom God has given them. I can imagine the Creator looking 

 down on no creature as he does on the intelligent benignant mother ; 

 if He has on earth a true delegate, it is herself. If it were practicable, 

 which it is not, to make mothers resign this delegation, let them resist 

 such an attempt ; but let them fit themselves to fulfil the office they 

 will refuse to surrender. I think with Pestalozzi that every mother, 

 having the will) can educate her young children better than others can 

 for her. 



But however much in early education may depend on the mother, 

 not little is the influence of a father in forming the character of his 

 children. Therefore those who, when censure is to be distributed, 

 assign so liberal an allotment to mothers, need to be reminded that 

 there is a paternal as well as maternal agency in every household ; 

 and if female management sometimes need amendment, so often does 

 male conduct require reform. Mr. Owen's principle of co-operation 

 cannot be better brought into action than in the marriage conpact, 



