These characters are exceeding rare, and seldom want any guides.

[] There are others who have indeed a pretty good capacity, but seem at first of a slow apprehension, either from want of taking due pains, or because they have been brought up in too tender a manner, and educated in an entire ignorance of their duty, have contracted a great number of ill habits which are like a rust difficult to be rubbed off. A master is absolutely necessary to boys of this character, and seldom fails of conquering these faults, when he strives to do it with mildness and patience.

ARTICLE VII.

TO REASON WITH CHILDREN; TO PROMPT THEM BY THE SENSE OF HONOUR; TO MAKE USE OF PRAISES, REWARDS, AND CARESSES.

I HAVE already insinuated these methods, which should be the most common, and are always the most effectual.

I call reasoning with the boys, the acting always without passion and humour, and giving them the reason of our behaviour towards them. It is requisite, says M. de Fenelon, to pursue all possible means to make the things you require of them agreeable to the children. Have you any thing displeasing to propose to them? Let them know, that the pain will soon be followed by pleasure: shew them always the usefulness of what you teach them: let them see its advantage in regard to the commerce of the world, and the duties of particular stations. This, tell them, is to enable you to do well what you are one day to do; it is to form your judgment, it is to accustom you to reason well upon all the affairs of life. It is requisite

[f] Inest interim animis voluntas bona, sed torpet, modò deliciis ac situ, modò officii inscientia. Senec. lib. v. de Benef. cap. 25.

Illis aut hebetibus & obtusis, aut malâ consuetudine obsessis, diu rubigo animorum effricanda est. Ibid: Epist. 95.

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to shew them a solid and agreeable end, which may support them in their labour, and never pretend to oblige them to the performance by a dry absolute authority.

If the case requires punishment or chiding, it will be proper to appeal to themselves as judges, to make them thoroughly sensible of the necessity of using them in that manner, and to demand of them whether they think it possible to act otherwise. I have been sometimes surprised in conjunctures, where the just but grievous severity of their correction, or public reprimand, might have provoked and exasperated the scholars, to see the impression the account I gave them of my conduct has made upon them, and how they have blamed themselves, and allowed that I could not treat them otherwise. For I owe the justice to most part of the boys I have brought up, to own here, that I have almost always found them reasonable, though not exempt from faults. Children are capable of hearing reason sooner than is imagined, and they love to be treated like reasonable creatures from their infancy. We should keep up in them this good opinion and sense of honour, upon which they pique themselves, and make use of it as much as possible, as an universal means to bring them to the end we propose.

They are likewise very much affected with praise. It is our duty to make an advantage of this weakness, and to endeavour to improve it into a virtue in them. We should run a risque of discouraging them, were we never to praise them when they do well; and though we have reason to apprehend that commendations may inflame their vanity, we must strive to use them for their encouragement, without making them conceited. For of all the motives that affect a reasonable soul, there are none more powerful than honour and shame; and when we have once brought children to be sensible of it, we have gained every thing. They find a pleasure in being commended and esteemed, especially by their parents, and those upon whom they depend. If therefore we caress them, and commend them when

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they do well; if we look coldly and contemptibly upon them when they do ill, and religiously observe this kind of behaviour towards them; this different treatment will have a much greater effect upon their minds than either threats or punishments.

But to make this practice useful, there are two things to be observed. First, when the parents or masters are displeased with a child, and look coldly upon him, it is requisite that all those who are about him should treat him in the same manner, and that he never find any consolation in the caresses of governesses or servants; for then he is forced to submit, and naturally conceives an aversion for the faults which draw upon him a general contempt. In the second place, when parents or masters have shewn themselves displeased, they must be careful, contrary to the common custom, not to resume immediately the same cheerfulness of countenance, or shew the same fondness to the child as usual; for he will learn not to mind it, when he knows that chiding is a storm of little or no duration, which he need only suffer to pass by. They must not therefore be restored to favour without difficulty, and their pardon be deferred till their application to do better has proved the sincerity of their repentance.

Rewards for the children are not to be neglected, and though they are not any more than praises, the principal motive upon which they should act, yet both of them may become useful to virtue, and be a powerful incentive to it. Is it not an advantage for them to know, that the doing well will in every respect be their advantage, and that it is as well their interest as duty to execute faithfully what is required of them, either in point of study or behaviour?

But there is a choice to be made of rewards, and it is a certain rule in this point, though not always sufficiently considered, that we ought never to propose under this notion either ornaments and fine clothes, or delicacies in eating, or any other things of that kind; and the reason of it is very evident, because in promising them such things by way of reward, we teach

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them to look upon them as good and desirable in themselves, and thereby instil into them a value for what they ought to despise; and the same may be said of money, the desire of which is so much the more dangerous, as it is more general, and apt to increase with age; except as it may be employed in good uses, it may also be looked upon as an instrument of virtue, and a means of doing good; under which notion they should be taught to consider it. I have seen a great many scholars, who of themselves have divided their money into three parts, one of which was designed for the poor, another to buy books, and the third for their diversions.

Children may be rewarded by innocent plays intermixed with some industry; by walking abroad, where the conversation may be advantageous; by little presents which may be a kind of prizes, such as pictures or prints; by books neatly bound; by the sight of such things as are curious and uncommon in arts and trades; as for instance, the manner of making tapestry at the Gobelins, of melting of glass, painting, and a thousand other things of that kind. The industry of parents and masters consists in the invention of such rewards, in varying them, and making them desired and expected; keeping always a certain order, and beginning constantly with the most simple, in order to make them last as long as possible. But in general they must exactly perform what they have promised, and make it an indispensible point of honour and duty never to disappoint the children.

ARTICLE VIII.

TO ACCUSTOM CHILDREN TO A STRICT OBSERVANCE OF TRUTH.

ONE of the vices we must carefully correct in children is lying, for which we cannot excite in them too great an aversion and horror. It must always be presented to them as mean, base, and shameful; as a vice which entirely dishonours a man, dis

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graces him, and places him in the most contemptible light, and is not to be suffered even in slaves. I have elsewhere spoke of the manner of punishing children that are subject to this fault.

Dissimulation, cunning, and bad excuses, come very near it, and infallibly lead to it. A child should be told that he should rather be pardoned for twenty faults, than a bare dissimulation of the truth, for hiding one only by bad excuses. When he frankly confesses what he has done, fail not to commend his integrity, and pardon what he has done amiss without ever reproaching him with it, or speaking to him of it afterwards. If this confession becomes frequent, and grows into a habit only to evade punishment, the master must have less regard to it, because it would then be no more than a trick, and not proceed from simplicity and sincerity.

Every thing that the children see or hear from their parents or masters, must conduce to make them in love with truth, and give them a contempt for all double dealing. Thus they must never make use of any false pretences to appease them, or to persuade them to do as they would have them, or either promise or threaten any thing without their being sensible that the performance will soon follow. For by this means they will be taught deceit, to which they have already but too much inclination.

To prevent it, they must be accustomed not to stand in need of it, and be taught to tell ingenuously what pleases them, or what makes them uneasy. They must be told that tricking always proceeds from a bad disposition, for nobody uses it but with a view to dissemble; as not being such a one as he ought to be, or from desiring such things as are not to be permitted; or if they are, from taking dishonest means to come at them. Let the children be made to observe how ridieulous such arts are, as they see practised by others, which have generally a bad success, and serve only to make them contemptible. Make them ashamed of themselves when you catch them in any dissimula