72 THE HOME, FARM AND BUSINESS CYCLOPAEDIA. 



within the capabilities of home to do without a school- training, especially 

 for boys. They must go to encounter the hard lessons which are to 

 prepare them for life. To learn their kind, to get rid of morbidity, school 

 is necessary. 



It is fortunately within the capabilities of home to smooth the path of 

 the suffering boy or girl who has to know everything. 



" The school-boy knows the exact distance to an inch from the moon to 

 Uranus," says Dickens, who had the liveliest horror of a school, and the 

 most active sympathy with school boys. " The school-boy knows every 

 conceivable quotation from the Greek and Latin authors. The school- 

 boy is up at present, and has been these two years, in the remotest corners 

 of the maps of Russia and Turkey, previously to which display of his 

 geographical accomplishments he had been on the most intimate terms 

 with the whole of the gold regions of Australia. If there were a run 

 against the monetary system of this great country to-morrow, we should 

 find this prodigy of a school-boy down upon us with the deepest mystery 

 of banking and the currency." 



It is this cramming system, this illy digested and cruel quantity, which 

 is killing our boys, disgusting them with the word learning, and which 

 turns our colleges into lounging-places for the lazy, where clubs are formed,, 

 and where a "dig" is looked down upon as a low fellow. It is against 

 this false system that all the powers of home should be arrayed. 



We fear that the teachers of girls are very seldom guided by any defi- 

 nite principles in educating the feelings and the intellect of their pupils. 

 The power of self-control is not sufficiently dwelt upon ; the power of re 

 flection, of looking inward, of gaining self-knowledge in its true sense, is 

 eft to be the growth of chance. The purely intellectual faculty, the 

 power of comprehension, instead of being constantly employed upon 

 objects within its grasp, is neglected in order to overload the memory. 

 Women should be taught to think, to be logical, to bring themselves to 

 reason where they only feel ; to study abstract justice (a quality a woman 

 seldom if ever possesses,) : it is a necessity. 



Much may be said of the capabilities of home education for a girl with 

 governesses. We are not rich in that staple English article ; but there arc 

 good governesses to be found. 



It is a question, however, whether or no we do not deprive a girl of 

 much that is afterwards agreeable in her life in not sending her to school. 

 She ought to know other girls and to measure herself with them. Youth- 

 ful friendships are the strongest ; and we would not like to relinquish 

 that bond. How much more of evil she will Learn than of good in a 



