656 L-ducation. 
wading through the classics and puzzling over mathematics. 
It is generally allowed that self-reliance is more likely to 
be gained at a public school than from private tuition, and 
for that reason only the former would recommend itself. 
It is useless to indulge the hope that the boy can be kept 
unspotted from the world, and unwise to attempt to effect, 
by any restriction, what experience has pronounced to be 
impossible. | 
But quite a different course is recommended in dealing 
with the education of girls. As you love innocence, let 
them be guarded as long as possible in the home nest, and 
learn to look upon young ladies’ seminaries and finishing 
boarding-schools, at which all the “ologies” are taught, 
and more is learnt than appears in the printed prospec- 
tuses, with deep-rooted aversion. Let it be a solemn duty, 
once determined on, never to be swerved from, to engage a 
pure-minded woman (and such are to be found, and the 
countenance of such may be read like an open book by the 
careful observer, who really becomes a physiognomist), and 
leave the training of a girl’s mind in her hands, not to re- 
ceive a superficial gloss of useful knowledge, and a veneer 
of what is right to know, but to be taught to entertain 
broad views in regard to fitting matter brought before her, 
which she will be able to form if there is a solid stratum of 
common sense to build upon. The mind should not be 
too heavily taxed, and it should not be forgotten that the 
body, if its natural powers permit, ought to be trained to 
various exercises. 
As puberty, with its attendant changes, draws near, it is 
time both to form the physique and to guard the morale, to 
make step by step a strong, bold, true man out of the boy, 
and an accomplished, modest, healthy woman of the girl ; 
one who would, if destined in her turn to bear children, 
probably bring forth healthy ones. The journey from 
youth to adult age is beset with danger to body and mind}; 
in it the first seed of consumption is often laid, then the 
many troubles of budding womanhood display themselves. 
The imagination, as the body nears the period of its com- 
plete evolution, becomes marvellously vivid, and much for 
good or ill, more particularly in the case of girls, does this 
stage of life owe to care or neglect. of those in charge. 
Far more than the world conceives is due to our surround- 
ings in youth; and depend upon it, far more evil is trace- 
able to them when bad, than to original sin, and the innate 
vice of poor human nature. 
2 Se a 
