language of the one being smooth and open; that of the other crowded with consonants, and extremely guttural.

But be this as it will, in all countries children are found able to express the greatest part of their wants by the time they arrive at two years old; and from the moment the necessity of learning new words ceases, they relax their industry. It is then that the mind, like the body, seems every year to make slow advances; and, in order to spur up attention, many systems of education have been contrived.

Almost every philosopher who has written on the education of children, has been willing to point out a method of his own, chiefly professing to advance the health and improve the intellects at the same time. These are usually found to begin with finding nothing right in the common practice; and by urging a total reformation. In consequence of this, nothing can be more wild or imaginary than their various systems of improvement. Some will have the children every day plunged in cold. water, in order to strengthen their bodies; they will have them converse with the servants in nothing but the Latin language, in order to strengthen their minds; every hour of the day must be appointed for its own studies, and the child must learn to make these very studies an amusement; till about the age of ten or eleven it becomes a prodigy of premature improvement. Quite opposite to this, we have others, whom the courtesy of mankind also calls philosophers: and they will have the child learn nothing till the age of ten or eleven, at which the former has attained so much perfection;

with them the mind is to be kept empty, until it has a proper distinction of some metaphysical ideas about truth; and the promising pupil is debarred the use of even his own faculties, lest they should conduct him into prejudice and error. In this manner, some men, whom fashion has celebrated for profound and fine thinkers, have given their hazarded and untried conjectures, upon one of the most important subjects in the world, and the most interesting to humanity. When men speculate at liberty upon innate ideas, or the abstracted distinctions between will and power, they may be permitted to enjoy their systems at pleasure, as they are harmless, although they may be wrong; but when they alledge that children are to be every day plunged in cold water, and whatever be their constitutions, indiscriminately inured to cold and moisture; that they are to be kept wet in the feet, to prevent their catching cold; and never to be corrected when young, for fear of breaking their spirits when old; these are such noxious errors, that all reasonable men should endeavour to oppose them. Many have been the children whom these opinions, began in speculation, have injured or destroyed in practice; and I have seen many a little philosophical martyr, whom I wished, but was unable to relieve.

If any system be therefore necessary, it is one that would serve to shew a very plain point; that very little system is necessary, The natural and common course of education is in every respect the best: I mean that in which the child is permitted to play among its little equals, from whose similar instructions it often gains the most useful stores of

knowledge. A child is not idle because it is playing about the fields, or pursuing a butterfly; it is all this time storing its mind with objects, upon the nature, the properties, and the relations of which future curiosity may speculate.

I have ever found it a vain task to try to make a child's learning its amusement; nor do I see what good end it would answer were it actually attained. The child, as was said, ought to have its share of play, and it will be benefited thereby; and for every reason also it ought to have its share of labour. The mind, by early labour, will be thus accustomed to fatigues and subordination; and whatever be the person's future employment in life, he will be better fitted to endure it: he will be thus enabled to support the drudgeries of office with content; or to fill up the vacancies of life with variety. The child, therefore, should by times be put to its duty and be taught to know, that the task is to be done, or the punishment to be endured. I do not object against alluring it to duty by reward; but we well know, that the mind will be more strongly stimulated by pain; and both may, upon some occasions, take their turn to operate. In this manner, a child, by playing with its equals abroad, and labouring with them at school, will acquire more health and knowledge than by being bred up under the wing, of any speculative system-maker; and will be thus qualified for a life of activity and obedience. is true, indeed, that when educated in this manner, the boy may not be so scemingly sensible and forward as one bred up under solitary instruction; and, perhaps, this early forwardness is more engaging than useful. It is well known, that many

It

of those children who have been such prodigies of literature before ten, have not made an adequate progress to twenty. It should seem, that they only began learning manly things before their time; and, while others were busied in picking up that knowledge adapted to their age and curiosity, these were forced upon subjects unsuited to their years; and, upon that account alone, appearing extraordinary. The stock of knowledge in both may be equal; but with this difference, that each is yet to learn what the other knows.

But whatever may have been the acquisitions of children at ten or twelve, their greatest and most rapid progress is made when they arrive near the age of puberty. It is then that all the powers of nature seem at work in strengthening the mind, and completing the body: the youth acquires courage, and the virgin modesty; the mind, with new sensations, assumes new powers; it conceives with greater force, and remembers with greater tenacity. About this time, therefore, which is various in different countries, more is learned in one year than in any two of the preceding: and on this age, in particular, the greatest weight of instruction ought to be thrown.

CHAP. XXVI.

Of Puberty.

IT has been often said, that the season of youth is the season of pleasures: but this can only be true in savage countries, where but little preparation is

made for the perfection of human nature; and where the mind has but a very small part in the enjoyment. It is otherwise in those places where nature is carried to the highest pitch of refinement, in which this season of the greatest sensual delight is wisely made subservient to the succeeding and more rational one of manhood. Youth, with us, is but a scene of preparation; a drama, upon the right conduct of which all future happiness is to depend. The youth who follows his appetites, too soon seizes the cup, before it has received its best ingredients; and, by anticipating his pleasures, robs the remaining parts of life of their share; so that his eagerness only produces a manhood of imbecility and an age of pain.

The time of puberty is different in various countries, and always more late in men than in women. In the warm countries of India, the women are marriageable at nine or ten, and the men at twelve or thirteen. It is also different in cities where the inhabitants lead a more soft, luxurious life, from the country where they work harder, and fare less delicately. Its symptoms are seldom alike in different persons; but it is usually known by a swelling of the breasts in one sex, and a roughness of the voice in the other. At this season also the women seem to acquire new beauty, while the men lose all that delicate effeminacy of countenance which they had when boys.

All countries, in proportion as they are civilized or barbarous, improve or degrade the nuptial satisfaction. In those miserable regions, where strength makes the only law, the stronger sex exerts its power, and becomes the tyrant over the weaker: while the