disgust those who have no talents, and to determine them, as soon as they become free agents, to abandon all such tormenting acquirements. While by this incessant compulsion still more pernicious effects are often produced on those who actually possess genius; for the natural constant reference in the mind to that public performance for which they are sedulously cultivating this talent excites the same passions of envy, vanity, and competition in the dilettanti performers, as might be supposed to stimulate professional candidates for fame and profit at public games and theatrical exhibitions. Is this emulation, is this spirit of rivalry, is this hunger after public praise, the temper which prudent parents would wish to excite and foster? Besides, in any event the issue is not favourable: if the young performers are timid, they disgrace themselves and distress their friends; if courageous, their boldness offends still more than their bad performance. Shall they then be studiously brought into situations in which failure discredits and success disgusts?

May I venture, without being accused of pedantry, to conclude this chapter with another reference to ancient and pagan examples? The Hebrews, Egyptians, and Greeks believed that they could more effectually teach their youth maxims of virtue, by calling in the aid of music and poetry. These maxims, therefore, they put into verses, and these verses were set to the most popular and simple tunes, which the children sang. Thus was their love of goodness excited by

the very instruments of their pleasure; and the senses, the taste, and the imagination, as it were, pressed into the service of religion and morals. Dare I appeal to Christian parents, if these arts are commonly used by them, as subsidiary to religion and to a system of morals much more worthy of every ingenious aid and association, which might tend to recommend them to the youthful mind? Dare I appeal to Christian parents whether music, which fills up no trifling portion of their daughters' time, does not fill it without any moral end, or even without any specific object? Nay, whether some of the favourite songs of polished societies are not amatory, are not Anacreontic, more than quite become the modest lips of innocent youth and delicate beauty?

80

CHAP. V.

ON THE RELIGIOUS EMPLOYMENT OF TIME. ON THE MANNER IN WHICH HOLIDAYS ARE PASSED.

SELFISHNESS AND INCONSIDERATION CONSIDERED. DANGERS ARISING FROM THE WORLD.

THERE are many well-disposed parents, who, while they attend to these fashionable acquirements, do not neglect to infuse religious knowledge into the minds of their children; and having done this, are but too apt to conclude that they have done all, and have fully acquitted themselves of the important duties of education. For having, as they think, sufficiently grounded their daughters in religion, they do not scruple to allow them to spend almost the whole of their time exactly like the daughters of worldly people. Now, though it be one great point gained, to have imbued their young minds with the best knowledge, the work is not, therefore, by any means accomplished. "What do ye more than others?" is a question which, in a more extended sense, religious parents must be prepared to answer.

Such parents should go on to teach children the religious use of time, the duty of consecrating to God every talent, every faculty, every possession, and of devoting their whole lives to his glory. People of piety should be more peculiarly on their guard against a spirit of idleness, and a slovenly

habitual wasting of time; because this practice, by not assuming a palpable shape of guilt, carries little alarm to the conscience. Even religious characters are in danger on this side; for, not allowing themselves to follow the world in its excesses and diversions, they have, consequently, more time upon their hands; and instead of dedicating the time so rescued to its true purposes, they sometimes make, as it were, compensation to themselves for their abstinence from dangerous places of public resort, by an habitual frivolousness at home, by a superabundance of unprofitable small-talk, idle reading, and a quiet and dull frittering away of time. Their day, perhaps, has been more free from actual evil; but it will often be discovered to have been as unproductive as that of more worldly characters; and they will be found to have traded to as little purpose with their Master's talents. But a Christian must take care to keep his conscience peculiarly alive to the unapparent, though formidable perils of unprofitable

ness.

To these, and to all, the author would earnestly recommend to accustom their children to pass at once from serious business to active and animated recreation: they should carefully preserve them from those long and torpid intervals between both, that languid indolence and spiritless trifling, that merely getting rid of the day without stamping on it any characters of active goodness or of intellectual profit, that inane drowsiness which wears out such large portions of life in both young and old.

It has, indeed, passed into an aphorism, that activity is necessary to virtue, even among those who are not apprised that it is also indispensable to happiness. Yet so far are many parents from being sensible of this truth, that vacations from school are not merely allowed, but appointed, to pass away in wearisome sauntering and indeterminate idleness; and this is done through erring tenderness, by way of converting the holidays into pleasure! Nay, the idleness is specifically made over to the child's mind, as the strongest expression of the fondness of the parent! A dislike to learning is thus systematically excited, by preposterously erecting indolence into a reward for application! and the promise of doing nothing is held out as the strongest temptation, as well as the best recompense, for having done well!

These and such like errors of conduct arise from the latent, but very operative, principle of selfishnes. This principle is obviously promoted by many habits and practices seemingly of little importance; and, indeed, selfishness is so commonly interwoven with vanity and inconsideration, that I have not always thought it necessary to mark the distinction. They are alternately cause and effect, and are produced and reproduced by reciprocal operation; they are a joint confederacy, which are mutually promoting each other's strength and interest; they are united by almost inseparable ties, and the indulgence of either is the gratification of all. Ill-judging tenderness is, in fact, only a concealed self-love, which cannot bear to be wit