Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/176

 to others. This point ought to be particularly kept in view by teachers who may have the charge of youth likely to devote themselves to the sciences, or the intellectual arts.

But we have yet to dispose of our third class of gifted minds;namely, those distinguished by the force or richness of the imaginative faculty. On this ground difficulties present themselves. Our course however is pretty clear, in the first place, when the imaginative tendency is only of that moderate and temperate sort which may safely be cherished, and which admits of being worked into the general elements of the character, so as to constitute, ultimately, nothing more than an agreeable distinction of the mind, securing for it the mild enjoyments of taste and refined feeling. Or secondly, we may know what to do, when this same element of mind, although decisively predominant, is associated with the active qualities of the understanding, and with that energy of the moral sense, which, together, form the orator:in this case a path is open to the gifted mind, approvable to common sense; and the teacher will know how to adapt his course of instruction to the probable destination of his pupil, whether to the pulpit, the bar, or the senate.

But what is to be said if the case we have to do with is one of those, happily not very frequent, and yet unhappily too frequent, to which the luckless term GENIUS is applied? I mean poetic and sensitive genius. It would generally, in such instances, be a fruitless attempt, nor is it certain that it would be a justifiable one, to crush the peculiarity of nature, or violently to thwart her intentions. Nevertheless, inasmuch as minds of this order are to be regarded as destined, if their gift actually expand itself, and be indulged, to misfortune and exquisite sufferingas victims, doomed to bleed for the entertainment of the public, a parent cannot be blamed who labours, by all gentle means, to turn