marks of tender affection ;-children reared up under this steady, mild, and yet firm discipline, soon become tractable, except in extraordinary instances of perverseness. They feel the yoke to be easy, and are withheld from acts of disobedience, more out of filial love and respect, than from the dread of chastisement. Hence it is, that in some houses, family government goes on with singular regularity, though so silent as to be scarcely perceived. There is no violent scolding; no boisterous threats; no fierce looks. Both the father and the mother are so mild and even in temper and behavior, that they seem scarcely to display any authority at all; and yet, their children are orderly, submissive, and dutiful, in a very uncommon degree. A single word, or a mere glance of the eye, from either parent, they mind more than the children of some families do the pelting of hard blows.

Neither is it the only advantage of this method of family government, that it accomplishes its object the most effectually, and with the least trouble;-there is another of equal, if not of greater moment. Children thus managed are led to delight in the company and conversation of their parents, and to receive counsel readily from their lips: and when they come of age to act for themselves, the transition from the state of subjection to that of personal independence is easy and scarcely perceivable. They don't feel like emancipated slaves. They are not intoxicated with liberty, but enjoy it soberly; still looking back, with mixed emotions of respect and love, to the salutary discipline they had been under, and still accustoming themselves to consult their parents, and to receive their advice with deference.

Nothing, indeed, is more clear, than that the simplest government is the best for children; and yet this plain matter of fact is

often overlooked, and that too, by some of excellent minds and hearts. Many parents of good sense and great moral worth, fearful of failing in their duty by not governing enough, run into the opposite extreme. They maintain a reservedness, a distance, a stateliness toward their children, who hardly dare to speak in their presence, and much less to manifest before them any symptoms of the gayety of their youthful hearts. They encumber them with a multitude of regulations; they tire them with long lessons of stern monition; they disgust and alienate them with a superabundance of sharp reproof; they treat their little levities as if they were heinous crimes. Instead of drawing them with "the cords of love," they bind them fast with cords that are galling and painful.

This mistaken, though well-intentioned manner of family government, is very apt to draw after it several unhappy consequences. Children so brought up, how much soever they fear their parents, do rarely love them very much. However much they respect their virtues, they seldom yield them the warm affection of their hearts. Of some, it breaks the spirits, and renders them unenterprising, tame and servile, in all the succeeding periods of their lives. Others, who have more native energy of mind and stiffness of heart, it makes exceedingly restless; and whenever these can get aside from parental inspection, they are particularly rude and extravagant in their conduct. With longing eyes, they look forward to the day of emanciption from parental authority, as to a jubilee; and when the wished for time has come, they are like calves let loose from their stalls. The transition is so great and so sudden, that it wilders them;

and it often happens that their ruin is involved in the first use they make of their freedom.

They are wide of the true mark in family government, who make a mighty bustle about it. In their laudable attempts to excel in that way, they spoil all by overdoing.

NUMBER LII.

OF PROCRASTINATION.

THE nation from which we derive our language, has been distin. guished, perhaps above all others, for steady, persevering industry; and several English old sayings, or proverbs, correspond with this prominent feature of national character. One of these ancient sayings of English origin, is, "Never put off till to-morrow what may be done to-day." On the contrary, sluggishness and procrastination are national attributes of the Spaniards, who, though acting with great spirit and vigor whenever roused to action, continue slothful and dilatory at all other times. Nor is it a little remarkable, that there is a Spanish proverb directly of opposite meaning to the English one, just now mentioned. Laborde, in his View of Spain, affirms it to be a Spanish proverbial maxim, "That one should never do to-day what may be put off till to-morrrow."

Whether it be owing to nature, or to education and habit, or from whatever cause else it may spring, there is, in this goodly

country, a prevailing disposition to follow the last of these two opposite maxims; though we are all ready to admit the reasonableness of its contrast. No infatuation is more deplorable, nor yet more general, the whole Christianized world over, than the vain hope that leads us to put off, from day to day, the great work which must be done, or ourselves be for ever undone. But I am now to speak not of the common and most deplorable infatuation which relates to the concerns of immortality, but of that which concerns our temporal interests. Of the fatal error of the former, the Holy Volume and the Pulpit give solemn warning; -of some of the mischiefs of the latter, it is mine to treat in this short essay.

Few things are more ruinous, even to our secular affairs, than customary procrastination. It confuses and blights every kind of worldly business; for business not attended to in the proper time and season, is either not done at all, or done with more labor and difficulty, and to less purpose.

Some men are in the practice of letting their accounts lie unsettled for several years together. It is no matter, forsooth; they are near neighbors and close friends, and can come to a reckoning at any time. At length, a settlement between them commences. The accounts of each, however honest, are swelled beyond the expectation of the other. On both sides, several items have vanished from the remembrance of him who is charged with them. A warm dispute ensues; perhaps an arbitration; peradventure an expensive lawsuit; and these close friends are severed for ever.

Some men neglect to make their Wills, though they know their estates would be inherited contrary to their own minds and