THE WONDEES OF THE SHORE. 49 



I have been sketching an ideal : but one which 

 I seriously recommend to the consideration of all 

 parents ; for, though it be impossible and absurd to 

 wish that every young man should grow up a natur- 

 alist by profession, yet this age offers no more 

 wholesome training, both moral and intellectual, 

 than that which is given by instilling into the young 

 an early taste for outdoor physical science. The 

 education of our children is now more than ever a 

 puzzling problem, if by education we mean the 

 development of the whole humanity, not merely of 

 some arbitrarily chosen part of it. How to feed 

 the imagination with wholesome food, and teach it 

 to despise French novels, and that sugared slough 

 of sentimental poetry, in comparison with which the 

 old fairy-tales and ballads were manful and rational ; 

 how to counteract the tendency to shallow and con- 

 ceited sciolism, engendered by hearing popular 

 lectures on all manner of subjects, which can only 

 be really learnt by stern methodic study ; how to 

 give habits of enterprise, patience, accurate obser- 

 vation, which the counting-house or the library will 



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