has crept in with the many insubordinate fallacies of the day, and to which the school of modern juvenile works bears witness. That mothers should be here and there found in private life who, either to conceal a morbid predominance of mere maternal instinct, or a slothful inability for exertion, profess to check selfishness, stem passion, and ensure obedience, by addressing themselves to a part of the child's mind for which he is not become responsible-this is not altogether incomprehensible. The inconvenience is upon their own heads, and an increase of family may possibly alter their views. But when thinking man busies himself with penning and printing a regular code of such mattersthe whole resting on a false hypothesis-he only affords a melancholy proof that in admitting the reason of a child of five years of age, he has utterly abandoned his own. That a child has a right to the privileges of a rational being who shall dare deny?—that the heir to such a faculty is entitled to the profoundest respect who shall dare contest? But it is not in allowing too early a disposal of his inheritance that we most guard his interests, or in forcibly pulling open the petals that we most show our admiration for the germ. Grant that the reasoning powers are developed in a child of five years old-he will be more eager to exert them than a man with his other faculties, physical and mental, he is more actively occupied and delighted-why not then the same with reason? Carry out the argument, and there will be no department of abstract science or philosophy the enjoyment of which he will not seek, and may not claim. In short, Socrates' Dialogues and the Bridgewater Treatises will be the greatest treats you can give him. And that those gentlemen who have troubled themselves to write such works as The Child's Book on the Soul' are literally of this opinion, we shall soon have the pleasure of proving in their own words. But how to adapt such subjects to a child's reception?-how to proportion them to his limited comprehension? The attempt is fraught with contradiction; and here lies the gross absurdity of the present system.

How doubly hard this falls upon a child may simply be stated. Required to understand that which, at best, he cannot enjoylimited for that he may enjoy to that only which he is supposed to understand-that power of reasoning which, in mercy to our want of it, is last and least required, unnaturally compelled into action; and the sense of beauty, the love of the dimly-understood, the faith in the things unseen' (for the deep rooting of which the sweet period of childhood seems specially designed), neglected or confused-the rights of nature are doubly violated. Regretting, as we deeply do, that the enjoyment of the only truly enviable part of life should be thus tampered with, we hardly know whe

ther

ther most to congratulate ourselves that this presumption is not of native growth, or to lament that it should be derived from a people to whom childhood especially is indebted for much that is beautiful and useful: for it is from American writers chiefly that this system of beginning at the apex instead of at the base-starting at once from that point to which the mind is intended only gradually to creep-has sprung. As we said before, the difficulty of clothing the highest subjects in the meanest language is fortunately what most effectually unmasks the futility of this high life below stairs' kind of proceeding.

But we must now let them speak for themselves, and introduce the reader to the Rev. Mr. Gallaudet's Child's Book on the Soul; the first stave on the ladder of infantine metaphysics. The title is almost sufficient. We should have thought that the Bible was the best book on the soul for all ages; but the Americans know better. Nor do we apologise for dragging our readers through the babyisms of such a work. A child's cause is common cause, and we are all interested in seeing that their little gocarts are not set running on treacherous paths.

Generally speaking, these metaphysical treatises are arranged, like this Manual, in the form of dialogues, where a profound mother and a docile child play alternately into each other's hands, and where a question is set up, like a nine-pin, only to be knocked down by the next answer. Being informed in the first dialogue that the little victim on the present occasion is only five years of age, we are not so much surprised to hear his mother ask him such silly questions-only, to be sure, they were hardly worth printing-as, whetherstones can talk-or roses answer him—or a watch learn anything: to all of which the child gives as sensible negatives as can be expected; taking occasion to put a few interrogatories in his turn, by no means inconsistent with his years,-viz., whether a pebble be good to eat; and especially whether there are any wild lions in the neighbourhood, &c. In the next dialogue, however, the mother assumes a higher strain, and after much badgering and browbeating, in the course of which a common English child would inevitably have foundered and disgraced himself over and over again, she brings him to confess, and cautions him to remember, that he is different from the aforesaid pebble, rose, watch, and his little dog Tray; with which useful ideas he goes off to bed, repeating them by heart, we conclude, all the way upstairs. The next morning the conversation is renewed; and having, meanwhile, grown a little conceited at finding that what he very well knew before is made so much of, the child now assures mamma, in a pedantic tone, that he has been thinking of nothing else, and that he has also discovered that his little sister Eliza is no more

like a pebble, a rose, a watch, and his dog Tray, than he is. But here, to our great surprise-and doubtless, were it known, to the equal dismay of the five-year old-the lady does not accept this ingenious inference; but, tacking completely round, drives all ideas, old and new, out of his head-by requiring to know why Eliza is like all these items? In vain now does the unfortunate child state the question to the best of his ability to himself, If I am not like all these things, why is Eliza like them?' and, not knowing that this would puzzle a saint, is fast on the high-road to vacuity, when the mother graciously takes him by the hand, and after leading him through a chain of most original argument, demonstrates that Eliza is like a rose, not because she has red cheeks-like Tray, not because she comes when she is called-oh no! these would be literal images which any vulgar mother could supply-but because she participates with both the dog and the flower in the abstract qualities of weight, hardness, form, colour, and parts!' This last word is evidently the first to fix his attention; for, leaving his mother in the clouds, we find him in the next few lines expressing an ardent desire to look inside his little sister, in order to ascertain by what machinery her hands are made to go!

It would be useless to attempt following this trash, through which we are as much at a loss to discover the lady's drift as the wretched object of all her pains. After dragging him through the abstract ideas of a state of thinking, dreaming, and death; after binding his bodily eyes, and desiring him to tell her what he sees with those of his mind; after presenting a number of objects to his imagination, and successively assuring him, in emphatic italics, You can think you are doing things, then, which you are not doing-you can think that you are seeing things, then, which you are not seeing-you can think that you are tasting things, then, which you are not tasting' (which latter argument the child would have done better to doubt, and begged the favour of a ripe orange to assist it)-and so on through all the senses; after making him guess whether he thinks with his 'hand or his foot,' his nose or his mouth,' his head or his heels;' after addressing him alternately as more than a man, and less than a baby, and making him ask stultified questions, or leap to brilliant conclusions, just as suits her convenience; after, in short, having by these means, consistent with strict hydraulic principles, created the necessary vacuum in the brain, she proceeds to pump in a stock of knowledge, and to wind up the first section of metaphysics by announcing to him, in large letters, that this something inside him, which thinks, and keeps thinking,'

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is his SOUL! Upon which the good little boy claps his hands, and begins jumping about in a paroxysm of delight.

But lest this summary should seem exaggerated, it may be as well to give the further dissertation on the soul in their own words:

'Mother. Can you hear my soul, Robert?

Robert. I can hear you when you speak, mother.

'M. Yes, I think what I am going to say to you, and then I think to have my tongue and my lips move, and I speak, and you hear the sound of my voice. Put your ear to this watch: do you hear anything? R. Yes, mother; it goes tick-tick, tick-tick.

'M. Now put your ear close to my head. I am going to think; try if you can hear my thinking.

'R. No, mother, I cannot at all.

M. My soul, then, makes no noise when it is thinking, and you cannot hear my soul; you can only hear my voice when I tell you what I am thinking.

R. That is very strange, mother; the soul must be very different from anything that I can see or hear. [Five years old!]

M. Yes, my son; and can you taste, or smell, or touch my soul?

R. No, mother; and I cannot taste, or smell, or touch my own soul. 'M. You cannot tell, then, whether your soul is round or square, or long or short, or red, or white, or black, or green, or yellow; you do not know that it has any form or colour at all. You cannot tell whether your soul sounds like a bell, or like a flute, or like any other thing: you do not know that it has any sound at all. You cannot tell whether your soul tastes like anything: you do not know that it has any taste at all. You cannot tell whether your soul smells like anything: you do not know whether it has any smell at all. You cannot tell whether your soul is hard or soft; or whether it feels like anything: you do not know that it can be felt at all.

'R. What do you call all those things, mother, that I can see, and hear, and taste, and smell, and touch?

'M. We call them matter, and we say they are material.

C R. Then my body is material?

'M. Yes, my son but your soul is not material; or, what is the same thing, your soul is immaterial.

'R. Mother, I suppose your soul, too, is immaterial; for I cannot see it, nor hear it, nor taste it, nor smell it, nor touch it.

M. Yes; everybody's soul is immaterial. Remember, my son, that you have a body and a soul. Your body you can see, and hear, and taste, and smell, and touch. It is like the pebble, the rose, and the watch : it is matter-it is material. Your soul has not form, or colour, or It is not matter—it call it spirit. The But you look a little

sound, or taste, or smell, or hardness, or softness. is immaterial; or, what is the same thing, we pebble, the rose, and the watch have no spirit. sleepy.' [No wonder !]

We

We need not comment upon the utter imbecility of supposing that a child of five years of age, or indeed of any age, can for one moment follow or take interest in such unholy rhodomontade as this; but none can do justice to Mr. Gallaudet until they have heard his familiar explanation of eternity. Locke was a dunce to him. Having advanced the child to the possession of a soul, the author proceeds to show him how long his soul will live; pursuing his usual plan of raising his curiosity, and exciting his wonder, till such time as the simple truth may be supposed to flash upon him with most effect.

'Mother. Look here, Robert, I will make as many marks upon this slate as there are days in one year. There, I have made the marks; now do you count them.

Robert. I have, mother, and they are three hundred and sixty-five. 'M. That is right; there are three hundred and sixty-five days in one year. If I should make as many marks again, they would be all two years. Now suppose I should fill all the slate full of marks on both sides, how many years do you suppose they all would make?

'R. I do not know, mother; perhaps they would make as many as

ten years.

M. Well, about that. Now suppose I should fill ten slates full, how many years would that make?

R. One hundred, mother; because ten tens make one hundred.

M. Suppose this room was full of slates, as full as it could be, one piled on the top of another, and every slate was full of marks, and every mark made one year; how many years would they all make?

'R. Oh! I do not know, mother; I could not count them.

M. Suppose every room in this house was full of slates, all covered with marks, and every house in this town full of them, and you should carry them all into a large field, and pile them all one on the top of another; how many years would they all make?

R. Oh! mother, nobody could tell. It would take you all your life

to count them.

M. Well, my son, your soul will live as many years as all the marks on all the slates would make.

'R. And will my soul die then, mother?

'M. No, Robert, it will not die then. It will keep on living. It will live as many years again as all the marks on all the slates in the great pile, and then it will not die: it will keep on living. It will live as many years as all the marks would be on a hundred such piles of slates -on a thousand such piles of slates-on as many such piles as you can think of, from the ground up away to the sky, one on the top of the other; and then your soul will not die-it will still keep on living. Your soul will live for ever: it will never, never die!'

What a pity she did not tell him this at the beginning: it would have saved all this outlay of good slates! We can see his weary and vacant look as he passively endures all this torrent,

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and