under punishment, a child may feel and acknowledge the tenderness of a parent: he may love you, while he holds you in awe and respect: indeed, in all the relations of life, where respect is extinguished, affection will soon die. Teach your child to love you, and teach him to revere you: the union of these, forms the only true filial regard. "His son's best friend! A father, whose authority, in show When most severe, and mustering all its force, And utter now and then an awful voice, plant." Cowper. CHAP. XII. AS these thoughts are of a general nature, I do not mean now to enter into the question, whether a public or private education should be preferred, but shall offer à few remarks respecting parents, teachers, and children. In these I shall avail myself, among other resources, of the aid of a friend, who is a teacher of youth. It is the advice of Plutarch, that we look after such teachers for our children as are blameless in their lives, not justly reprovable for their manners, and of the best experience in teaching; "for," as he adds, "the very spring and root of integrity and virtue lie in the felicity of a good educa tion:" and he says farther, "how can that man deserve the name of a father, who is more concerned to gratify others in their requests, than to have his children well edu→ cated? For though parents know, and are told before hand, by those who understand better than themselves, both of the inability and the profligacy of certain teachers, yet being overcome, either by their fair and flattering speeches, or prevailed on to gratify such friends as speak on their behalf, they nevertheless commit the charge of their children to them." As it was in the days of Plutarch, so is it in the days we live in. We have inefficient teachers, and profligate teachers, and parents commit their children, the men and women of the next generation, to their care! Complaints have been made, and justly, of schools; but were there no inconsiderate parents, profligate teachers would have no pupils, and thus a remedy would be provided for the evil. A young lady accompanied an acquaintance of hers, a lady who was taking her daughter to school: she was surprised by hearing the mistresses of this school say that they were engaged to a card party in the evening. On her expressing her wonder that they should both leave their pupils, the lady answered, "Oh! they will not go till they are gone to bed." The young lady replied, "I do not like them at all, and I wonder you allow your daughter to remain with them." "It is so fashionable a school, and they draw so beautifully that I do not like to remove her." These fashionable ladies shortly afterwards, stopped payment for £. 15,000 ; to clear which sum, nothing was left but the household goods: one of the ladies having disappeared with all the money she could procure. On the inconsistency of parents, a teacher of youth writes in the following manner: "We have a fine little girl of ten years old, of whom I have not the smallest doubt, had we alone the management, that she would be all we could wish or desire; but I apprehend if in her case, circumstances produce their general effect, that she will be every thing we would not wish her to be; I have hitherto counteracted, by incessant attention and ob→ servation, the mischief done while at home, from the unnecessary, nay unlimited indulgence which she experiences, and the unbounded admiration she receives from the company at her father's house, and from those whom she visits with her parents; I plainly perceive that dress, visiting, eating, &c. will in a short time occupy her whole thoughts." Who can wonder then if chil dren so instructed, become vain, selfish, and disobedient? Parents who thus educate their children, have seldom, if ever, any comfort in them, and for this they may thank their own conduct. The mistress of a school, on complaining to a lady of the injury her daughter sustained by being kept at home a long time after the vacation had |