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LETTER VIII.

SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

Inefficacy of the usual methods employed to counteract the effects of injudicious indulgence.---Vanity: its consequences. -Indolence of parents renders them frequently blind to the faults of their children.---Happy consequences of early

obedience.

IT is not at present my business to enter on the peculiar advantages or disadvantages of public education; all that now concerns me, is to examine how far it can operate in ameliorating the tempers and dispositions of the heart.

I presume, it is with a view towards counteracting the effects of home indulgence, that the system of fagging, which prevails in some of our most celebrated seminaries, was at first introduced; but how far it contributes to this desirable end may reasonably be doubted.

The spirit of self-will is not to be subdued by a temporary subjection to a whimsical and capricious tyranny. It does not thence learn to impose restraint upon itself; but while it sullenly submits to superior strength, gathers force from the fond anticipation of the moment when its turn of despotism shall commence. It appears, then, that this temporary subjection serves but to whet the appetite for tyranny, and to add malignity to revenge. Slaves are ever observed to be the most cruel taskmasters; and I make no doubt we should find, on

examination, that the little fag who has most severely suffered from the cruelty of the great boy, to whom he has been forced to yield an unwilling submission, becomes in his turn the most cruel despot.

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Let us suppose the self-willed boy sent to a school where fagging is prohibited, and were a proper degree of discipline is maintained. That this discipline has a salutary tendency, we cannot doubt, when we consider that it is "by gratifications of the will without the consequent expected pleasure, and disappointments of it without the consequent expected pain," that the associations producing selfwill are most powerfully counteracted. The idea of pain, early associated with the ideas of restraint and application, will naturally make the will revolt from them: but when by habit, by sympathy, and by the pleasure attending success, this association shall have been in some measure weakened, the will must necessarily receive a salutary cheek; which will be further improved by the punishments consequent on its gratification; these punishments changing the associated idea of pleasure, attached to the gratification of will, into an associated idea of pain. Were these happy effects of discipline allowed to opperate fully, they might no doubt prove in the end effectual; but many circumstances concur to prevent their operation to any extent.

The discipline of the school-room is instituted to serve one particular purpose, and provided that be obtained, it is deemed sufficient. If the demands made upon the attention and the memory be complied with, there is no question asked concerning the tempers and dispositions of the heart. These are left to the discipline of companions: and what

does it produce? The tyranny of the strong opposed by the artifices of the weak. Force and cunning equally directed by selfishness. And this is called an epitome of the world!!

Let us turn from this melancholy picture, and pourtray another for ourselves in more pleasing colours. Supposing the will to have been subdued by early habits of obedience, and all the first associations of the mind to have been strictly attended to, so as to have produced the first principles of piety and benevolence, a tendency to all the amiable passions and affections of the heart; generosity and gratitude glowing in the breasts of the ardent; sympathy and tenderness in the souls of the gentle; while candour, simplicity, and truth, were alike the portion of all. Let us suppose a school composed of such children, and governed by a man of sense and discretion; who knew how to render the introduction to knowledge subservient to the cause of virtue. Improvement might then, indeed, be expected with confidence; for not only from the instructions of the master, but from the social intercourse of the scholars, improvement would inevitably result. The friendships formed in such a society would spring from congeniality of taste and sympathetic affection; from gratitude for kind offices, or esteem for extraordinary qualities; which principles of friendship are all excluded by the selfish and unsocial passions which prevail among boys who have been spoiled by previous indiscreet indulgence. It cannot be too often repeated, that where by this indulgence every idea of pleasure is connected with the gratification of self-will, the benevolent and so cial affections must be annihilated. Every competi

tor is viewed as an enemy by pride and selfishness; and the reward bestowed on merit, which calls forth the pleasing emotions of sympathy in the breasts of the generous, excites in the self-willed the painful feelings of envy and displacency. I have seen a young person of extraordinary endowments, but whose dispositions had been ruined in infancy, turn pale at the praises of a school-fellow, and show such symptoms of hatred and antipathy to the object of applause, as plainly evinced the strength of the malevolent passions in the heart. When these passions have obtained such an ascendency, it is in vain to hope that by the discipline of a school they can be eradicated. All that the best school can do for them, is to restrain them by means of terror; and this restraint may so far operate, as to teach the pupil to conceal emotions that would lead to disgrace or punishment; but will not prevent their influence, where neither disgrace nor punishment are apprehended.

If school discipline can do little towards ameliorating the temper and disposition with regard to boys; I am afraid that with girls it can do still less. In the course of a classical education, there is a method, a regularity, that insensibly produces correspondent habits in the mind; and though the cultivation of the understanding may not be always as much attended to as it might and ought, yet from the very nature of their studies, associations must be formed favourable to its improvement; and the improvement of the reasoning faculties is surely one step towards the attainment of power over the passions. But in the education of girls, alas! its influence is seldom tried. With the objects to which their at

tention is directed, the reasoning faculties have no concern. In the routine of accomplishments to which they are destined, no one power of the mind is called into exercise, except memory. And so distinct from each other, so multiform, so perpetually changing, are the objects of their attention, that it is impossible the mind should ever be long enough fixed, to acquire habits of regularity or arrange

ment.

Where the pride attached to self-will prevails, emulation must degenerate into envy, and envy cannot be better classed than it is in our Litany, with hatred, malice, and uncharitableness; so that where it is made a powerful instrument in education, there can be little hopes of bettering the dispositions of the heart.

Vanity, not appearing on a superficial view to be a dissocial passion, is less the object of our hatred than of our contempt. But when we consider its effect upon the mind, we must deprecate the introduction of it, as the kindling of a destructive flame, which time cannot extinguish, and which reason cannot quench; which blinds the understanding, and warps the judgment, rendering flattery not only pleasant but necessary as the food it feeds on, and giving a disrelish for truth. Gratified vanity, it is true, is always complacent, and on this account wears the aspect of benevolence. But does it sympathize in the sorrows of the afflicted? Does it glow with the honest warmth of gratitude? Is it capable of making a generous sacrifice for another's good? No: Vanity, so far from partaking of these characteristics of benevolence, is ever cold and selfish, alike incapable of tender sympathy and gen

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