covers it up all this seems to indicate something better and more powerful than vanity and the love of dress. It It may be said that this is imitation, but the child evidently takes pleasure in the imitation, and in imitating the duties of a mother to her child.

CHAP. II.

PLUTARCH in his Morals says that "the chief study of parents should be to become themselves effectual examples to their children, by doing those things which are right, and avoiding all vicious practices, that in their lives, as in a glass, they may see enough to give them an aversion to vice. They who chide their children for the faults they commit in their own persons, do, though they think it not, under their children's names accuse themselves: if their lives be utterly vicious, they lose the freedom even of reproving their servants, much more do they forfeit it towards their children; nay, they even make themselves their

counsellors and instructors in wickedness: where the old are abandoned, the young must of necessity be so too."

Rousseau says, "of all the branches of education, that which is bestowed on infants is the most important, and that branch incontestibly is the province of the female sex." Providence has bestowed a high dignity on woman; to her is confided the formation of the mind of man: they who degrade her to an inferior rank in the scale of creation, will do well to reflect on this: and she likewise will do well to reflect deeply on the importance of the charge committed to her. If first impressions are the most lasting, what care should a mother take in making those first impressions; how watchful, how observant should she be; how indefatigable in her study of the progress and the operations of the human mind, that most stupendous of all structures, even from the earliest dawn of intelligence. There are various ways of making instruction a perpe

Dr.

tual source of interest to children. Doddridge relates that he acquired a knowledge of the history of the Bible while sitting on his mother's lap, a mere child; she explained to him the pictures representing a part of this history, on some Dutch tiles, with which the chimney of the room in which they usually sat was adorned. I remember learning in the same manner from the engravings in Saurin's French Bible; and recollect the pleasure with which I used to contemplate the figures of the infant Moses, and the young Joseph. Pictures afford lessons of piety and morality to very little children, as leading to short abstracts of the histories they refer to: children may be told too, that when they can read, they will be able to find out the meaning of the pictures for themselves. It might be well to awaken their curiosity about some, without gratifying it, that a desire to read may be excited in them. Instruction may likewise be given to young children, by repeating little pieces of poetry

to them: I mention poetry, because the rhymes attract the ear, and hence fix themselves on the memory. I remember teaching a little girl, before she could say her letters, as she sat on my knee, to repeat little hymns after me, and the learning these pleased her as much as playing with any toy that she had; insomuch that she looked forward to the times when she was thus to receive instruction. My mother has often related to me that when a child, after she went to bed, an aunt of hers used to come and lie down beside her, and tell her little histories, and teach her psalms and hymns, and that she felt great pleasure in being thus taught, and spoke of her aunt's memory with affection, from this remembrance. With respect to very young children, some people think that it is right to talk or to repeat absolute nonsense to them, because they cannot understand sense. An ancient philosopher said, "there is no difference between living and dying." Some one asked him why then he did not destroy himself?