Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/156

 means used for giving effect to so strict a sort of government. The same result is attained in a far happier manner when there can be realized between a father and his sons, the spirit and warmth of' intellectual companionship.

I have already said, that, as early as the eleventh year, or at some time during the middle period of the educational course, enough may ordinarily be known of children's natural endowments to enable a parent to assign them, severally, to one or the other of the two classes―the intellectual, who are to receive an elaborate and extended mental culture, or the unintellectual, who are to be fitted for business, or business-like engagements, and whose education, of whatever sort, must, or may well be brought to a close at an early age.

But about the fourteenth year, it may generally be practicable (in relation to those who are destined to a professional course) to determine the particular line that a youth is to pursue. Now if this can be done, two methods of mental treatment appear to be proper, the one of which is very obvious, and would hardly need to be specified: the other might perhaps not occur to the teacher, or might be discarded as not consistent with the former. What I mean is, that if the professional destination of a youth is ascertained, then, in the first place, and as every one will admit, something may be done before professional studies are entered upon, to familiarize them to him a little. Indeed it is probable that, if the choice of a profession has been made on the ground of a youth's personal taste and peculiar talent, he will himself court the studies that bear upon the object of his preference. On this point there can be no need to enlarge.

But while indulgence, to some extent, may be allowed to a boy's predilections for particular pursuits, there is another