as we progressively behold, because the impression has been made on the brain when it is gradually hardening, and filled with other images.

Although we understand how to reason in this manner, we have some difficulty in acceding to it: and yet we absolutely do make use of this very mode of reasoning. For instance, do we not say every day, "My habits are fixed, I am too old to change them, I have been brought up in this way.”—Moreover are we not conscious of a singular pleasure in recalling to mind the images of youth? are not the strongest propensities formed at that age? Does not, therefore, all this prove that the first impressions and first habits are the strongest? If infancy be the fittest period for engraving such

images on the brain, it must be allowed that it is the least so for the cultivation of reason. That ductility of the brain which causes impressions to be easily formed, being united with extreme heat, produces an agitation which sets all regular application at defiance.

The brain of children may be compared to a lighted wax taper, situated in a place which is exposed to the wind-its flame is perpetually flickering. A child asks you a question, and before you can answer, its eyes are directed towards the cieling: it counts all the figures that are carved there, or all the bits of glass which compose the window: if you wish to bring it back to the first subject of discussion, you vex it as much as if you confined it in prison. Thus great care is required in managing

the organs before they assume a determined inclination: answer every question promptly, and leave the child to put others as it pleases. Gratify only the curiosity which it evinces, and lay up in the memory a mass of sound materials. The time will come, when these impressions will be regularly arranged, and the brain having more consistency, the child will reason on the consequences. Nevertheless, be attentive to correct when the reasoning is fallacious; and to convince it, without embarrassment, as an opportunity offers, in what a wrong consequence consists.

Let a child amuse itself freely, and mingle instruction with amusement: let wisdom be introduced at proper intervals, and under an agreeable form; and take care not

to fatigue it by a precision which is both formal and injudicious.

If a child entertains sad and dismal notions of virtue, if liberty and irregularity present themselves in a seducing manner, every thing is lost, and your labour is in vain. Never suffer it to be flattered by little contemptible associates, or people without character or worth: we naturally love the manners and sentiments of those whom we regard; and the pleasure which is sometimes taken in the company of disreputable people, begets, by degrees, a love of those pernicious habits which renders them so truly contemptible.

In order to conciliate children to people of real estimable character, make them reflect on their excellence and utility, their sincerity,

their modesty, their disinterestedness, their fidelity, their discretion, but above all their piety, which is the foundation of the rest.

If a child has any thing about it revolting or offensive, you must observe to it that "piety does not produce such defects: when it is perfect, it destroys, or at least softens them." But, after all, we must not persist in making children admire certain pious characters whose exterior department is disgusting.

Although you are particularly anxious to regulate your own conduct with the utmost circumspection and nicety, do not imagine that children will fancy you faultless oftentimes your slightest imperfections will be noticed by them.