shelf, and the grey powder—always in half
mourning for the little ones it has killed.

But when the children first begin to think and
talk, how the adults plague them! Judgment
and experience have yet to come. That they may
come the faster in the first years, there is given
to the young child by Nature a vivid sense of all
present impressions, a strong curiosity to roam
from one inquiry to another, and an impartial
readiness to pass from impression to impression,
fastening with a like eagerness on each. In
our profound wisdom, as adults, when we see
that an impression has struck painfully upon a
child, we beat incessantly upon the hurt. The
child shrinks, cries; it is temper, it is nonsense;
we must conquer this. We must not let a baby
get the better of us. The vivid thought, already
more painful than our duller sensibilities can
understand, would be dropped in a minute or two
if we presented to the grasp of the busy and
tender little mind, another and more pleasant
subject of attention; but no, that  won't do
for us. The thorn has thrust only a tiny point
into the sensitive little creature, and it should
not cry for anything so small: therefore we will
not pick it out at once but hammer it in to the
head, by reasoning, and scolding, and long
dwelling on the topic of which a mere touch
was painful. There is hardly anything upon
earth, so wretchedly common as this kind
of dealing with the quick imaginations of
the young. A minute's cry is tortured into
half a day's affliction by defiance—often enough
through the "naughty temper" of adults—of the
simple rule that when a little child is hurt by
the too intense dwelling of its imagination upon
some distressing thought, especially if it be one
that ought not to distress it, we must not allow
such an impression to be deepened.

We can plague a young child, only through its
fancy, its affections, and its passions: which are
all the material its mind has to begin with.
Reasoning powers do not act upon experience
until it is abundant enough to have yielded
general truths out of the incidents of life. But
when reasoning begins to come into the young
mind, what heavy plagues we are! Thousands
and thousands of times when we ought to guide
and support, we enter into conflict with the
little thinker, and run full tilt at him with our
great mental carcases.

A delightful period of childhood, in which
fancy and reasoning hold equal sway, is followed
in most children, by a period in which the early
uses of the fancy have been served, and, a dozen
or more years of experience having been gained,
the exercise of reason becomes vigorous. The
stores of memory then begin to be eagerly
grouped and fashioned into argument, and, as
the growing muscles impel boys and girls to leap,
run, tumble, spin, and skip, the growth of
reasoning power impels to a keen relish of all
manner of argument. But the plague of adults
is on this period of young life also. Again and
again the cry goes forth against the boy or girl
whom a wise Providence has brought to this,
stage of development, " You mustn't argue. Do
what you are told. I know better than you. I
say it is, and it is. Don't be conceited!" Stupid
father, turning a deaf ear to the stir of
intellectual life in your child, refusing to preside
graciously and wisely over the wholesome
exercises to which it is impelled, Which is the true
plague?

This is the time, also, when the schoolmaster
and tutor rule. The wise schoolmaster—and he
is not now so rare a being, as he was, a quarter
of a century ago—knows very well that sound
teaching depends on a right method of turning
to account this argumentative period in the
mind's growth, which includes the years between
fourteen and twenty-one. He accompanies and
encourages the reasoner, selects carefully the
fresh material for thought, and lays worthily
before the busy mind, fruits of the wide experience
of others. He does not discountenance
with a rude dogmatism the exercises by which
intellect is to attain healthy and vigorous
maturity. He acquires from his pupils a trust
more implicit than man ever yet has beaten into
youth; and the appreciable service he thus
renders is remembered gratefully till death. But
there are still teachers alive, who plague the
young with dogmatism, who protect their own
ignorance as teachers by discouragement of
questions, who reason little for themselves, and who,
while they expect boys or girls to learn by rote,
reckon as insubordination every outbreak of
question or argument. Young people who are denied
outward expression of this active force within
them, reason on, nevertheless. Denied fair
opportunity of bringing their conclusions to the open
test of comparison with thoughts and
experiences wider than their own, it is hard for them
to contrive that they shall be reasonably sound.
They weave error on error into their long chain
of secret thought, because they are not allowed
to produce their work as it is done, and get all
people who will, to pull at one end of it while
they pull at the other, and so test its strength.
All those interminable boys' arguments over the
family breakfast, or the family dinner, or the
nursery tea-table, are they a source of plague?
If so, it is of the plague of dulness in adults,
who do not see what is a-building; who do
not understand the wisdom of young builders,
whom a sacred instinct has impelled to try
freely and vigorously every brick they are
setting in a structure mightier than any temple
on earth.

Now ready, price 5s. 6d., bound in cloth,

THE SECOND VOLUME,

Including Nos. 27 to 50, and the Christmas Double
Number, of ALL THE YEAR ROUND.