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cation as they are in medicine — and I never discovered one in either — 

 and yet, I believe that the influence of things, and the circumstances at 

 home, are of paramount importance in education. 



The earth is robed in varient beauty, and the principle pervades all 

 living things, and forms of changing aspect ; and throughout the civil- 

 ized world this principle of beauty is all potent in guiding the tastes and 

 appreciation of intellectual man. Its efficiency is greatest during th© 

 morning of our existence, but our enjoyment of it may be greater in the 

 evening of a life on whose daAvn the spirit of beauty impressed its glowing 

 images. 



There is no difficulty whatever in making the principle of beauty an 

 element in early education. The child instinctively loves the beautiful, 

 and proves it by extending a tiny hand and attempting to seize that 

 which it had never seen before, and could not have learned to desire. — 

 From the brightness of the stars to the verdure of the earth — from the 

 bird and the butterfly, to the painted petals of the flowers — the child ad- 

 mires the beautiful, and is never far Avrong in his first estimate of it. — 

 Why, then, should we let the hard pressure of animal wants — the con- 

 ventional absurdities of society — or the barren bleakness of an unadorned 

 home, and a less lovely school-house — pervert the child's nature and put 

 out this spark of divine light — the only mental ray that illumes the nas- 

 cent understanding, which comes with us into the world ! 



There can be no doubt — there is no doubt — in the minds of all sensi- 

 ble persons, who have examined the subject without prejudice, that the 

 things habitually presented to the eye of the child influence the mind of 

 the mature man. This influence is, of course, modified by the physical 

 organization of the individual, and the circumstances of after life. But 

 the early impressions are, after all, those which must color individual 

 character apart from physicial peculiarities ; and who knows how often 

 the circumstances of infant life destroy a noble, or enlarge and render 

 active a naturally feeble faculty, or propensity for evil? We now know 

 that the great and the good have generally come from a home of beauty 

 and excellence ; and we know, too, that vice and misery grow most luxu- 

 riantly in the frightful hot-beds of crime, sunk in the filthiest dens of 

 our great cities. This we all admit ; but we seldom enquire whether the 

 wordless, but speaking beauties of Nature would not have prevented the 

 evil growth which the moralist and the magistrate are called on to 

 restrain — with how much real benefit, all who will, may see. 



