EDUCATION OF CHILDREN.
Neither the illustrious preceptor of Alexander, nor the amiable preceptor
of the Duke of Burgundy, nor all the professors of the universities of
England and France, ever effected so much in the way of education, as that
unrecognised president of all universities and public
schools--Example!--From the hour of their birth, children begin to
imitate. Their first words are mimicries of what they hear pronounced
before them. Hence the origin of different idioms and enunciations.
Montaigne made Latin the mother tongue of his son, by surrounding him with
persons who spoke no other language, and even a nurse who spoke Latin.
The intellect of children expands long before they have the power of
expressing their ideas. Physicians have affirmed that children have been
known to die of jealousy, before they were old enough to express their
sensations. Excessive notice of another child, or seeming neglect of
themselves, has been found to induce a state of languor, and hasten their
end. Young children suffer doubly in illness, from the incapability of
expressing their pain.
Their language being formed upon our own, and their conduct framed upon
our own, the duty of placing desirable examples before them is
sufficiently evident; yet we frequently punish them for faults of which
the first lesson was given by ourselves. In many conditions of life,
however, parents are forced to delegate to other hands the care of their
progeny. The labouring poor, for instance, cannot constantly watch over
them. While the rich wantonly confide their infants to the care of menial
hands, the poor trust them to any which God is pleased to send to their
aid. It is even more essential to avoid giving bad examples to children
than to offer them good. Yet how often are family dissensions and
recriminations exposed to their observation! A man and wife living ill
together, who so far forget themselves as to quarrel before their
children, create a preference and partizanship which must diminish the
respect equally due to both parents. In humbler life, abusive language
often ends with blows; and what must be the effect of such scenes on the
tender mind of infancy?
The presence of children on such occasions, when proved before the
magistracy, ought to be considered an aggravation of the offence against
the law. Fathers and mothers by upbraiding each other in presence of their
children, often beget impressions which all their future representations
are unable to eradicate; and of what avail to the comfort of parents the
brilliant accomplishments and attractive manners of their children, if a
son have been taught to disparage his father, or a daughter to think ill
of her mother! Often do children so young as to appear deficient in
observation, receive vague but indelible impressions, afterwards recalled
by a retrospective view; when the past appears clear and free from the
vapours which veiled it from our earlier comprehension.
Among the lower orders, if a poor man be laborious, his son is usually the
same. But the son of a father who ill-uses the mother, is pretty sure to
turn out an idler and a dunce in childhood, and, in riper years, a
ruffian.