NUMBER XCI

OF TREATING CHILDREN WITH EXCESSIVE SEVERITY.

In the excellent little tract of Dr. Cotton Mather's, entitled,

A

Essays to do Good," the venerable author lays down for himself the following rule, in regard to his treatment of children: "will never use corporeal punishment except it be for an atrocious crime, or for a smaller fault obstinately persisted in." maxim which deserves to be written in golden characters, or rather, and far better, to be engraven upon the hearts of parents, and instructors of schools. Nor is it at all inconsistent with the maxim in Holy Writ, "He that spareth the rod hateth his son.” For, by no fair interpretation, can this last be made to mean, that the discipline of the rod is necessary in any cases other than the aforementioned.

Obedience is the first lesson to be inculcated upon childhood. Ere it can discern between good and evil, the child should be taught to obey. Then it is that the task is comparatively easy, and may be effected by a small measure of prudent enforcement. No restraint, however, should be imposed upon childhood, but

such as is salutary, and of obvious necessity. All and every needless restraint is tyrannous in its nature, and hurtful in its consequences. The child should be habituated to passive obedience, and, at the same time, be permitted to enjoy freedom of action in things indifferent-to speak as a child, to act as a child,-to be lively and playsome as a child. One, whose childhood is closely held in trammels, whose merely childish things incur rebukes and frowns, is full likely to make a licentious use of freedom when it arrives, or else to be a mopus all his days.

Children should be carefully guarded against every species of useless vexation.

rors.

"Provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discour aged." Lay upon them none but necessary and wholesome restrictions. Never cross them for the mere sake of showing your authority. Reclaim with a lenient hand their involuntary erMark not against them with a severe eye their trivial aberrations. Be no less ready to commend their well-doing than to blame them for doing ill. Otherwise, the obedience paid you will be uncheerful, constrained, and slavish. If you are of a faultfinding temper, you will occasion the very faults you seek after. Your children, out of despair of pleasing you, will become regardless both of your pleasure and displeasure, except in so far as they are influenced by slavish fear.

As to stubbornness, or obstinate disobedience, " this kind goeth not out" but by severe discipline. It must be mastered by blows if nothing else will do, and the earlier the better. But for the rest, mild and persuasive methods are far preferable.

Over young minds, the law of love might be made to have a much more powerful influence than the penal law. Much more

easily are they drawn and guided by their affections than driven by their fears; the tenor of the former being spontaneous, steady, and uniform; while the latter operate only by occasional excitement. You have the fastest hold of the child that you hold by "the cords of love." By these cords you can draw him with ease. Delighting to please, and of course dreading to offend you, it is in your power to imprint in his mind indelible characters; to weed out his wayward propensities; to awaken his emulation; to stimulate his industry; and to mould him to sentiments and habits, preparatory to excellence in after life. But fear alone is an unnatural and odious tie, which the child is ever desirous to break loose from. It stimulates indeed, but not in the manner to produce those ingenuous sentiments and feelings, which are the foundation of excellence in character.

Experience abundantly shows, that degrading punishment has rather a pernicious, than a salutary effect, upon the minds of fullgrown persons. Few culprits, if any, were ever made better by means of the whipping-post and the stocks, or by cropping their ears, or in fixing a brand of infamy upon the forehead or hand. Instead of being led to amendment by these means, they generally are made the more desperate and abandoned, by reason that they view their characters as irretrievably lost. So that, after having gone through one of these ordeals of shame, they ever after are utterly shameless.

Now it should be remembered, that children are as men and women in miniature; possessed of the like passions, and particularly of the like feelings of honor and disgrace. Moreover, in children the most promising, these feelings are the most acute. They have a keen sensibility to shame, whereof a good use may

be made by prudent management; but if this sensibility be put to hard proof, and that frequently, it becomes blunted, and their minds grow callous. And a child that is lost to shame, and to all self-respect, is in peculiar danger of being a lost child.

And besides, none are more unpitiful and cruel than those who have been brought up under the cruellest discipline, which seldom fails to blunt their feelings, and produce hardness of heart and ferociousness of temper. The cruellest of slave-drivers are those that had been bred slaves, and had daily felt the smart of the lash. And by parity of reason, children that are trained up under parents or governors, who carry punishment beyond the bounds of kind correction into those of vengeance, and who delight to inflict such punishment as attaches infamy, must needs possess more than a common measure of native amiability, if in the end they turn out sweet-tempered, humane, and of a nice sense of honor.

I will conclude with the words of the great Locke." To break the spirits of children by too severe usage, is to them a greater injury than the opposite extreme of indulgence, for there is more hope, that a wild undisciplined spirit will become orderly, than of raising up one made abject and heartless by severity of discipline."

NUMBER XCII.

OF DRAWING AND FIXING THE ATTENTION OF CHILDREN.

THE great Locke, a man of almost unrivalled depth and acuteness of understanding, in his excellent treatise on Education, expresses himself as here follows:-" He that has found a way how to keep up a child's spirit easy, active, and free, and yet, at the same time, to restrain him from many things he has a mind to, and to draw him to things that are uneasy to him; he, I say, that knows how to reconcile these seeming contradictions, has, in my opinion, got the true secret of education."

This is a sentiment of no ordinary importance. No less just than profound, it is entitled to the strict regard of parents, of preceptors, and of all who have the management of children.

The true power over children, is that of swaying their inclinations; the power of withdrawing their inclinations from one direction, and settling them down in another. It is not hard words, nor hard blows, that can gain this point. The will is wrought upon by other methods. Of many examples that might go to illustrate this matter, I will adduce one, and a notable one.