Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/15

 fifteen, or even twenty, who may be gathered from several families.

, whether its inmates be related by the ties of consanguinity or not, is a place where the stress of government rests much rather upon affection, and sentiment, than upon rules and penalties, or the mechanism of external order. School, on the contrary, is a little world where, as in the great world, if delicate sentiments exist at all, they must be kept out of view; or at least must neither be allowed to interfere with the movements of the general body; nor must it be mainly relied upon. On this point of distinction much will be found to hinge;—one might say, every thing, more or less immediately, within the two systems respectively; and especially so in relation to whatever affects moral training.

But to confine myself to my proper subject, it may be said that the culture of the intellectual faculties, in combination with a warm and refined family affection, tends to impart a healthy freshness to the mere reason, and to bring it into happy alliance with the moral sentiments, in a manner that can hardly be effected at school, and yet so as is highly conducive to the harmony of the faculties, and to the general efficiency of the character.

It is probable indeed that some conductors of large schools may resent the supposition that the ennobling emotions of the heart are lost sight of in the communities over which they preside; and may deny that feeling necessarily gives way to law, and to the force of mechanism, where numbers are to be governed. But while it is freely granted that, under a wise and skilful management, even in the largest schools, certain generous sentiments and motives of honour may almost supersede the operation of law and of its sanctions, yet it can never be pretended that emotions of this class are the same in themselves, or the same in