Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/44

 and elastic gaiety of children, even when they may have been informed of some domestic calamity, must have attracted the attention of every one; and although we do not wonder on such occasions, we cannot but admire that constitution of the mind which, during the period when there can be no responsibilities, and when there are no duties to be performedwhen solicitude could be of no utility, spares the growing mind and body the burden of care.

And yet we should not stop short with a sentiment of mere admiration in such instances, but should draw from this factthat the Author of our nature has made so special a provision for securing the happiness of childhood, an inference of high practical importance, and it is this, namely, That what the Creator in his beneficence plainly intends, we are bound, by all means in our power, to promote; or, in other words, that it is nothing else than a religious duty to make the happiness of infancy and child-hood our main care in whatever relates to early education; and this happiness, as every one knows, demands imperatively, good government and moral training.

This first law of educationsanctioned as it is by the clearly-expressed will of God, must be held to condemn at once every mode of instruction, and every principle of treatment, which in any degree trenches upon the gay felicity of early life; and it must be said too, and on the same ground, that a stern and gloomy temper, as well as an irritable one, in a parent or teacher, is a decisive disqualification for the task of education: especially it should be remembered, that, while the unhappy temper of the master of a school bears upon the minds of children only occasionally and partially, and still leaves room for enough of thoughtless hilarity; the very same temper in a parent, or a private instructor, cannot fail to exclude almost every ray of joy from the narrower precincts of home. A home,