In addition to the directions given in the preceding number, for cultivating those expressions of countenance, on the part of the mother, which will have a happy influence in the education. of children, some other considerations are worthy of notice :Habit will be constantly making the accomplishment of the object to be attained, more and more easy. The feelings will flow spontaneously to the face, and find the muscles of expression ready to respond to them. A new source of enjoyment to the individual will begin to develop itself. The free play of the features will react upon the soul; the very movements of which will thus have fresh life and elasticity imparted to them. The countenances of the children, catching the spirit of the maternal influence, will beam with brighter and fairer looks, and mind meet mind, and heart sympathize with heart, more intelligibly and closely.

In this way, too, the parent will find greater facility in the government of the children. For their countenances being early trained to a frank and full expression of the internal workings of their souls, their peculiarities of thought and of feeling will be the more readily discovered, and the beginnings of what is wrong within them be more easily checked. Their happy dispositions, their kind and amiable tendencies, their ingenuous and docile traits of character, will more clearly, also, be shown in their earliest and faintest buddings, and receive

the prompt and fostering care which they need. The children will soon see the reproof, or the approbation, of the parent, as they merit the one or the other, in the very expression of the features. This expression, if it is only a plain and decided one, will, in most cases, control them. To govern, therefore, by the eye, and the auxiliary movements of the countenance, is what every parent should aim to effect. Let there be genuine affection to the child in the heart of the parent,-a true regard to its best good, an abiding sense of accountability to God,— a constant reliance on his aid,-self-possession, firmness and decision,—and, under the influence of such a spirit, let the resolute determination to be obeyed, and to enforce authority, show itself in the eye, and countenance, and general air,— and it is astonishing to witness the prompt and unresisting submission which the child yields to it. On the contrary, how very early, even in infancy, does the little subject of the domestic dominion scrutinize the parental look, when authority is assumed, and take advantage, if it discovers it, of the halfaverted, the unmeaning, the irresolute and wavering expres

sion.

Let no mother, then, who hopes to govern her children well, neglect to cultivate these means of doing it, which the God of Nature has placed within her reach. If she has not the power and the habit of throwing promptly a commanding and decided expression into her countenance, when it is needed in the discipline of the family, let her begin immediately to acquire them. The muscles of expression are so constituted as to obey her will. Let the effort be made. Let it be repeated and persevered in. Success is practicable, and no great length of time will be needed to secure it.

In the further prosecution of our subject, did the writer not fear the trespassing on the patience of his readers, it would tend to show its great practical importance, to trace out the intimate connexion between an intelligent and expressive countenance, on the part of the mother, or teacher, of young children, and their quick and correct understanding of not a small portion of the words of their mother tongue. It is the occasion on which words are first used, and the visible circumstances attending

that occasion, and not any magical power in the mere sounds of the words themselves, which aid the child in the discovery of their meaning. The countenance comes in for its full share of these visible circumstances; and the more intelligent and expressive it is, and suited to the occasion, the greater facility will be afforded in the acquisition of oral language. Our limits will not allow of any thing more than a mere hint on this topic, and a single allusion to the well-known fact of the eagerness with which an intelligent child will watch and study the countenance of one who is addressing to it, for the first time, words with the import of which it is as yet unacquainted.

Before bringing his suggestions to a close, the writer cannot refrain from urging a review of his whole subject, and of its various practical tendencies, not only upon mothers, but upon all parents, and teachers of children and youth. He has been aware of the philosophical cast of many of the ideas which have been advanced. But Philosophy and Truth are one. The ore which we need for the most common purposes of life, is often found deep beneath the surface. Education can never be thoroughly understood as a science, or practised as an art, without a knowledge of the laws and movements of the mind. This Mind acts through and on matter before it can reach and influence other minds. A prominent part of this action is by the aid of the machinery of expression in the countenance, formed by the hand of Infinite Wisdom for this very purpose. How can we neglect the study and use of this instrumentality, and hope to succeed effectually in the training up of the young and tender mind, with the divine blessing, and on the best inodel?

For the Mother's Magazine.

HINTS TO YOUNG LADIES-No. 5.

HABITS OF THINKING.

HABITS of thinking indicate moral as well as intellectual character. As they help at first to form character, they are

the testimonies of it. It is truly said, "as a man thinketh, so is he."

You will distinguish between the habit and the attribute. Thought is an attribute of the mind. The manner in which its thoughts are directed, disciplined, and accustomed to proceed, forms its habit. The mind is almost as powerless to change these habits, when once formed, as the mighty river to roll back its waters. The laws of mind and of matter, although essentially different, are often similar in their operation. The finger that traces in the sand the little furrow, which gives direction at its source to a mighty river, is controlled by an intelligent agent. That agent may start and direct, by a similar volition, a little thought. But in the onward progress and maturity of that thought, the mind may become as powerless to control or turn it back as to stay the waters of a flood.

The mind may be regarded as one of nature's laboratories, possessing in itself the principle of perpetual motion, and constantly operative to the production of thought. This well-adjusted machinery moves steadily on. We can neither stop its motions, nor destroy the machine; yet we may contribute to retard or facilitate its operations, furnish it with material, direct its energies, and control the order of its thoughts.

The mind, then, should be much directed to the consideration of itself. Here is a world of wonders. How subtle its essence, yet how strong and vigorous its motions! How weak, frail, and bending under every infirmity of its clay tenement, yet how it reaches after eternal realities, and seeks to lay hold on immortality! How susceptible! How capacious of thought, and able to improve! What master-springs of power, reason, and expedient, does its history develop! Though often depressed and participant of physical infirmities, it often, too, shows its superiority and independent life by its vigorous and increasing energy, exerted amid bodily weakness and decay Sometimes it rises even on the ruins of the body, and we seem to see it treading on "its earthly house" as it takes its upward flight.

The motions of the soul cannot be stopped. Who can cease to think by willing not to think? That very effort will give

energy to the mind. Destroy the body, and you but demolish its clay tenement. It leaps from the ruin, and fastens on the skies. As, then, physical changes cannot annihilate the soul, so there are no moral appliances by which we can stay the onward march of concatenated and eternal thought. The chain is unbroken; the first link riveted in eternal decree, the last link identified with eternal duration. We may as easily strike the sun from his orbit, or blot out the stars, as to annihi late a thought.

We cannot, then, stop the motions of the mind. There it is immortal--held to life by its own nature, and by the decree of God binding all things to an unalterable harmony of parts. The present is but a single modification of its being. It is in a prison-house, and sees through a glass darkly ;—or rather, we may say, it fills a palace, fearfully and wonderfully made-a structure of divine skill and munificence. Its architecture, how wonderful! Its symmetry, how exact! It mocks human art; it proclaims a God. The temple that stood on Mount Moriah, with its beautiful gates,-its stately and thousand columns,its marble pavements,-its multiplied colonnades, its brazen altar, golden walls, and sublime towers, glittering in the sunbeams, and reflecting a dazzling glory on the holy city belowthat temple, which employed 80,000 workmen, and the extent of human art, and forty-and-eight years in building, with its inner courts, and priestly service, and ark of the covenant, and cherubim and shekinah,-what was it all to this temple of the human body, built on creation's last day, by nature's architect, and constructed of elemental principles, indestructible, with more than materials of stone, and cedar, und gold, and costly labor? That was only a faint type of the temple where we shall worship on high, and has long since passed away; this contains its own principles of indestructible being, and shall be raised a spiritual body immortal. That smoked with the blood of beasts, and sacrifices of meaner name; this stands perpetually by the priesthood of Christ, consecrated by the sacrifice of his own body once for all. From that, the architectural proportions have been defaced,-its walls have crumbled,-the plough-share has passed over its beautiful gates and spacious