ELEVATING THE PROFESSION OF THE EDUCATOR.^ 119 



because, unlike words, things cannot be reasoned away. The de- 

 parture of man from the unerring wisdom of nature is ever marked 

 by anomalies. With a vain assiduity he pursues a vague and re- 

 mote enjoyment forgetting that happiness as a state depends upon 

 present particulars. Parents labour to secure a future and uncer- 

 tain good, at the certain loss of the present happiness of their chil- 

 dren, and under the plea of making them wise in age, they sacrifice 

 the seventh and most pleasurable portion of their lives to the mise- 

 ries and vices of a school. There is no earthly suffering comparable 

 with that of a tender and sensitive child in a large school. The 

 afflictions of man however severe are softened by sympathy or re- 

 pelled by religion and philosophy, for " the mind is its own place'' 

 and transcends every trouble : but a child in its innocence, unac- 

 quainted with grief, inexperienced and helpless, forsaken of all that 

 makes life joyous, the victim of school restraint and compulsion, har- 

 rassed by selfish and cruel companions and deafened by the riot 

 and noise of their contending tyrannies, is a misery that might o- 

 verwhelm the mind with sorrow and dismay. Human nature is 

 first abused in childhood to be disabused in manhood, as if the sole 

 business of education, divine and human was alternately to corrupt 

 and purify the mind. Were the system of education conformable 

 to nature, schools would become homes, school-masters fathers, and 

 children compatriots in universal love. For the love of the young 

 is of so social a quality, that they attach themselves by a mutual 

 sympathy to each other ; there would then be no invidious and de- 

 trimental comparison between home and school, parent and master ; 

 a child would find encouragement where now it meets repulse, and 

 the novelty of change would interest the attention, not alarm its 

 fears. But one hard heart depraves a community, for the tyranny 

 of sin is obstinate to overcome goodness ; thus the tenderness of in- 

 fancy and childhood is eflfaced by the harshness of a corrupt educa- 

 tion and an iron fellowship associates mankind. Evil like wealth 

 is self productive, and the primary sin of schools is generative of al- 

 most every other sin in the catalogue of the heart. Cruelty pre- 

 sides over time and place, and the school-room and the play-ground 

 are by turns the scenes of selfishness, and childish arts. 



If it be argued in apology for such schools, that they the better 

 adapt youth to the world, it cannot be denied, inasmuch as that the 

 world can hardly discover to them a novelty in vice ; the difference 

 is only in the object. What can demonstrate the sinfulness and 

 foolishness of man so clearly as the sinfulness of the child, who in- 



