Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/13



not about to compare public and private education as if intending to disparage the one, that the other, which is my chosen subject, may appear to the greater advantage. No question can reasonably be entertained as to the great benefits that attach to school discipline, whether effected on a larger or a smaller scale; nor is it to be supposed, whatever may be said of female education, that that of boys could, in the majority of instances, be well conducted beneath the paternal roof.

The reader would have good reason to distrust the judgment of a writer who, for the purpose of enhancing the importance of the particular task he has undertaken, should speak of Home Education as if it were abstractedly and universally preferable to the opposite system; or should affirm that it might be adopted by the generality of families: the contrary of both suppositions I fully admit.

Having thus precluded a probable misunderstanding of my intention, I may with equal explicitness, profess the