representation: many people will recognize the original in their own observation.

Gluttony, and a fondness for what their instructors are pleased to term "something nice," are early taught to children; one of their first lessons should be, that there is no distinction between one kind of food and another. I remember being told by a little boy, who went as a day boarder to a school in the neighbourhood of his father's house, that his mother always kept sk something nice" in the cupboard for him when he came home: she thus taught him to be gluttonous, by giving him more than he needed to eat; an epicure, with her "something nice;" and discontent with his fare at school. The love of sugar plumbs, and tarts, and wines, is not inherent in children: it is their almost constant lesson, "Be a good child, and you shall have some sugar plumbs;" "If you will let me wash your face, you don't know what a nice piece of plumb cake I have got

in my pocket for you;""Say your letters like a good boy, and you shall have some sweet wine after dinner :" Is it possible that a child thus carefully instructed, should refrain from setting a value on these dainties? It is evident likewise, that we ourselves consider such things as worthy of being prized, otherwise they would not be held out as bribes to children; a little self-examination will serve to teach us this mortifying truth; and if on learning it we aim at our own cure, we shall be better able to refrain teaching such lessons to children; let them see that we set no value on one thing above another, and neither will they. There is a most absurd custom of distinguishing particular days, by particular kinds of food; I have seen children, for some days before Christmas day, jumping and singing, from the expectation of regaling on roast beef and plumb pudding on that day; and a birth-day, or other occasion of rejoicing in a family, is generally celebrated by an accumulation of " nice things:" circumstances

cease to be trivial and insignificant, when they contribute to form the character; the little glutton, or epicure of three or four years old, may in after-life, waste his substance and his health in riotous living, and then may come the consequence, that he shall be fain even to eat husks with the lowest of the brute creation. Such are often the effects of early indulgence as it is termed : and here again the indulgent parent becomes the cruel one. Baxter says that the fondness of mothers in letting their children eat and drink what they will, lays the foundation for most of those evils in life which arise from bodily indisposition. It might be supposed that a consideration of the health of children, would prevent those around them from feeding them luxuriously; a very slight observation would serve to convince them that those the most plainly, nay, even in some degree scantily fed, are the most healthy and active. Those who have the management of children, owe it as a sacred duty to them, to endeavour in

their early years, to establish a good, or to reform a bad constitution in them; for without the enjoyment of health, other comforts are of little avail: one of the principal means to preserve or attain this enjoyment is simplicity of living.

D

CHAP. VI.

ANOTHER of the sayings of Plutarch in his morals is, "We are to accustom children to speak the truth, and to account it, as indeed it is, a matter of religion to do so." Were any one to say to some parents, professing both religion and morality, You give, yourselves, to your children daily lessons of deceit and falsehood, how would they startle at the accusation! yet, let them strictly examine their conduct and conversation, and then pronounce sentence themselves. The son, in the fable, who at the gallows bit his mother's ear off, for allowing his petty thefts in childhood to pass unheeded, inflicted a just punishment on her;