escapades are the natural result of "Liberty"-liberty! that sacred name under which many a crime has been perpetrated, and many a dangerous and ruinous mistake committed. There is no fear of the child born under free institutions and destined to exercise a freeman's privilege, becoming too tame by means of just parental discipline-and it is certain that he will render the more healthful obedience to the laws of his country, and more reverential observance of the laws of God, by his being accustomed to observe the laws of his earliest protectors and loving friends. To see sensible people smile with secret admiration of the "spirited" exhibition of rebellious will on the part of their offspring, excites, in an English mind, a sense of lurking danger-as also to hear pupils asserting boldly what they "will never learn," and what they "will learn," and to see teachers using all manner of adroit flatteries and timid expostulations, with a view to obtain a slender influence over the pupils, leads one to look out anxiously for ultimate results.

Natural quickness enables persons to discern methods of "getting along," and to pass well in social life, who have lacked thorough training. Many a man finds himself in a position which forces him to guide or influence others, who has not acquired the difficult art of governing himself; and many a girl is placed in the centre of maternal cares, with all the duties and responsibilities of rearing a family, who feels herself at a loss on many points, because of her own

undisciplined childhood, or, what is worse, feels herself at no loss, but thinks she knows all about it.

It happens frequently, also, that persons attain wealth who have not themselves been well educated; and they, in the United States as in England, mistake the important objects of instruction, and omit them in favour of the showy or amusing. In this way only can I account for the listlessness or even the impatience that I have seen manifested in school examinations, when the subject is a solid branch of education. Thus, at an exhibition of the attainments of the children who were brought in from the "Orphan Asylum" to the Apollo Rooms in New York for examination, a well-dressed and animated audience began to thin away in an alarming manner under an examination on geography and arithmetic, so that the sagacious directors "stopt that," and immediately seats were cheerfully resumed to listen to choruses, solos, and amusing dialoguesand, though printed in the programme, grammar, and parsing, and lessons in geometry, were not ventured upon, but gave place to "Dirty Jem," "the Handy Lad," and the "Grand Banquet." When I remarked this to more than one sensible and well-educated matron, I was told that, not only at an examination of strangers and orphans, but of their own children, the parents often exhibit weariness when the subjects of investigation are solid. It is pleasing to see severer studies diversified by moral songs, hymns, and music, and a touch of elocution may be very wisely bestowed

on the embryo stump-orator or future senator; but that these should be the all of education which excites an interest is an unsound and unsafe state of

things. I am not a judge of how much may be enjoyed by Americans in such matters, being myself used to the ways of a slower and more enduring people, who can sit out long sermons, long lectures, and long school examinations; but I feel assured that it is not the well-informed part of the audience who become weary of the substantial and useful portions of instruction; and it might be wise in the lessinstructed parents to remain and see if they can learn something of what their children are acquiring.

In no country shall we find more lovely examples of cheerful domestic union, or more honourable and self-denying exertion on the part of parents, in sharing and lightening the studies of their children —any one might feel with me, enriched for life by having been admitted to such family circles, and formed friendships with such parents; but, in the ever-changing mass of people in the maritime and commercial cities, such steadfast and enlightened characters are far from being the majority. Yet how rich are the rewards of those who lay themselves out to indoctrinate the young immortal, and to strengthen, while they prune, the budding energies of the future citizen!

Though it is years since, in my remote Scottish home, my eyes often overflowed as I read the speeches of John Quincey Adams, and pictured the

venerable, hoary-headed friend of his country, day after day, standing on the floor of the Senate, breasting alone the opposition of the many, and asserting alone the right of petition; yet it was not till I recently read his mother's letters to him, that I comprehended whence he derived his solitary courage, or how he was so deeply imbued with the principle which sustained him still in old age. Was not Mrs Adams as truly serving her country, in rearing such a son, as was her husband in his long years of separation from his family, amid vexatious and ever-varying negotiations? The generous enthusiasm, the reasonable and life-giving patriotism which glowed in her bosom, was transferred into that of her children, and was expended in cheering and strengthening her husband under a separation which, to her devoted heart, was but one long pang of suffering. It is most interesting and amusing to see her complain that the paper she writes on cost a dollar a sheet, and beg for an importation of pins, as there is not one left in the town—and of needles, for the tailor has the cloth still, but no tools to make it with-in the same letter in which she wisely comments on the history of her new-born country, cheers on the patriot to greater endurance and firmness, and selects parallel cases, or pattern characters, from Greece or Rome. Bravely did she live through many painful trials and dangers, and was, after all, in spite of much privation, as happy in her strenuous exertions for the good of her large

family, and her wide circle, as she could ever have been after, even when she saw first her husband and then her son elevated to the Presidential chair. She was a Mother!-suited to the trying times on which her lot fell, and nobly fulfilling her part to her children and her country-such a mother as Napoleon said France needed, but such as France has not yet found.

But America had still a higher style of parental discipline in the parents of her Washington, which she most justly appreciates. Every schoolroom has rung with the story of that father who embraced his erring boy, because he spoke truth even though he accused himself; and every parish library can produce the narrative of the patriot's early training. When, as its fruit, we find the self-denying hero and brave warrior retiring to the forest to seek a place of prayer, which the throngings of a restless camp denied him-when we see him refusing the perpetual honours and government which his grateful country pressed upon him, we gladly trace back all these heroic virtues to parental training, and to the early reception of those Christian principles which made him what he was, and enabled him so well to accomplish the work for which God raised him up; and do we not sympathise with the quiet confidence of his wife, when asked if, during his long absences in such stirring times, she were not wretched with anxiety, she replied, "I know that wherever George Washington is, he is doing