tion. In many cases, the difficulty is intrinsically great. A mother comes in with her wretched offspring, perhaps of the tender age that requires her constant care: what is to be done with them? She is either of the vicious cast, or she is not. If she is of the vicious cast, it may be for the interest of the children to be removed from her: but still she may be of a character to sustain a bitter pang from the separation; and so much does human nature owe to the maternal affection, that every virtuous man would spare it every possible violation. If the mother is not of the vicious cast, there are few acts of cruelty which one would more desire to avoid, than that of tearing her from her offspring. Yet she is obliged to remain among the vicious part of the adults; and if her children remain with her, they receive the contamination which contact with vice imparts to the young. If the children are in a place of separation, and the virtuous mothers are admitted among them, how is the line between virtue and vice to be drawn, and who are they who shall draw it? It will be difficult to prevent the effects of favouritism, the effects of negligence, and the effects of artifice. Improper mothers would be admitted among the children, and proper ones excluded. The children would be contaminated, and the maternal affection would suffer. The rule should be this. It is of more importance that the children should not be contaminated, than that the mother should have the pleasure of being along with them. The virtue of the children, therefore, should be consulted and provided for in the first place; and only so much of the company of the mother admitted, as is found not to be inconsistent with the most efficient regulations for the virtuous education of the young.

The question arises, If poor-houses are places in which children ought not to be educated, what is to be done with that unhappy multitude of helpless creatures who now owe their subsistence and wretched training to the parish? Mrs. Cappe answers this question boldly, by asking in her turn, "Upon what principle are those children preserved at all?" And she quotes Mr. Bernard's introductory letter to the third volume of the Tracts for bettering the Condition of the Poor, in which he says, "It had been better for thousands of individuals to have perished in their infancy, than to have protracted an injurious and hateful existence of vice, infamy, and wretchedness. It is not the number, but the welfare and the moral and religious improvement of our fellow subjects that should be the object of our researches:-not the support or increase of a noxious abundance of beings immersed in sin and sorrow; but the formation and

institution of virtuous and active members of society, adapted by early habits and education to their various stations in life." This proposition would go to the leaving to perish all those children who cannot receive an education calculated to make them virtuous members of society. The objection to this, however, is its cruelty. The child-murder which is practised in some countries would be an eligible expedient compared with this; because it would save a prodigious quantity of the most exquisite misery. On this ground, which is the only real ground, we should consent to the last proceeding sooner than the first.

Mrs. Cappe easily finds an expedient instead of both. She recommends a division to be made of every poor-house; one part of the establishment to be appropriated to the adults; another to the children. Such a plan, she says, has actually been adopted at Shrewsbury and some other places.

So much are we impressed with the importance of this subject, that though we are not very fond of having recourse to legislative authority; for every thing that can be done without legislative authority, as legislatures are yet constituted, stands a good chance of being better done without it than with it; yet in this case we should be disposed even to desire legislative interference. The evil is so rooted; so little virtue presides over the parochial management of the poor; vulgar laziness, vulgar pride, and vulgar prejudice, not to speak of more corrupt motives, prevail to such a degree, that voluntary improvements in this department present a very distant and gloomy prospect. By an act of parliament, it might be rendered imperative upon parishes to keep the parish children apart from the adults, and to bestow upon them an education. Since it really is doing to the country, the greatest mischief, to prolong existence to a number of beings brought up in such a manner, that it would have been good for the country if they had never been born.

From the poor-houses, those deplorable seminaries for the young, Mrs. Cappe proceeds to charity-schools. These are institutions, considerably numerous, throughout the country, which have been created, generally by the inunificence of individuals, for the purpose not only of educating, but of rearing and maintaining a number of children. As these children, if destitute, would have been reared by the parish, it is involved in the notion of the case, that a better education and better treatment in general were destined by the founders of charity-schools, for the children brought up in them, than could be expected from the parish This being implied in the nature of the case, these institutions are rather perverted from their intention, when they

are not appropriated to children, who but for extraordinary circumstances would not have been objects of charity;—the children, for example, of parents reduced, without profligacy, from rather a better situation in life ;-or the children of parents remarkable for their good conduct, and of delicate feelings, though in the lowest situations, as a reward, and one of the sweetest of rewards, for their virtue.

As the education of the great mass, reared by the parishes, when the parishes shall be made to afford an education at all, ought to be calculated for the more ordinary occupations of life, so Mrs. Cappe thinks, and thinks with justice, that the charityschools ought to educate and train for occupations that are in some degree select. In the case of girls, for example, to whose condition her remarks are principally directed; if those who are reared by the parishes are reared for agricultural servants, manufacturers, and house servants, those reared in the charityschools should be trained for the next classes of occupations; she enumerates those of nursery maids, upper servants in small families, attendants upon young ladies, or dressers in boardingschools. With regard to the importance of a more select education for nursery-maids, she offers a remark, with the weight of which we have often been impressed. "Whoever," says she, "considers how large a portion of time is generally spent in the nursery, by the children of opulent parents, and what are the lessons of obstinacy, duplicity, and caprice which are often taught there, must be fully convinced that the early habits, the education, and the consequent character of the nursery maid, is of no small importance. Who shall calculate the evils that have resulted, and that are daily resulting, from this fruitful source, not only to the children thus corrupted, but through them to society at large?"

This, indeed, is a most fruitful topic; and wonderful it is, that the importance of it should as yet have been so very little, in this country at least, the object of attention. Whoever considers that the children of the richer sorts are almost entirely consigned to the nursery maids, for the first seven years of their lives; that it is the nursery maids, of course, who during all that time have the formation of their minds; and that the mould which the mind receives from the discipline of the first seven years, decides in a great degree upon the character for life, will be struck with amazement when he thinks of the little regard which is paid to the selection of nursery maids; - that to obtain for that purpose females of more enlightened minds, of more rational habits, than people without a good education ever

can be, is scarcely ever an object of desire. The consequence is, that nursery maids are not a better, but more frequently a worse set of people, than the rest of the servants; more lightheaded, and more prone to all the vices which idleness engenders. Those whose work occupies both their hands and their minds from morning till night, are in general a more steady and trustworthy sort of people. The nursery maid is comparatively an idle and pampered woman; and almost always shows a predilection to the company of men. Neglectful of their duty, they are full of contrivances for the concealment of their neglect; and thus the children have from them, in the utmost perfection, two lessons of which the consequences are fundamental. The one is, to take their pleasure, instead of performing their duty. The other is, to employ falsehood and hypocrisy, to deceive others into a belief, that they have performed good acts which they have not performed, and have not performed bad acts which they have performed. This is quite sufficient. These are the fundamental characteristics of the finished villain. It will depend upon other circumstances, how much or how little of these baneful ingredients the child shall drag up with him into life; but a portion, if the early discipline has been ordinarily strong, is sure to adhere to him, and to impair his virtue and happiness as long as he lives.

This is a subject which ought to be treated at great length; and the consequences of it placed in every point of view, in order to communicate, if possible, a proper idea of its importance. The little regard which it receives in England is a singular proof how little the value of education is known in this country; how little education itself is understood; and what a wretched estimate we make of the circumstances on which the formation of character depends. The choice of the nursery maid is of far more importance than that of the literary instructor.-Inferior to us in many points of knowledge, in this, the Greeks and Romans were decidedly superior. They took extraordinary care of the character and qualifications of the persons whom they allowed to be about their infants and children. One thing we are told of the Greeks, which is worth mentioning; that the Lacedemonian women were peculiarly prized as nursery maids; and when one knows the education of the Spartan women, and the character which it imparted, one is struck with the propriety of the choice. One result of which the memory is preserved, is worthy of being mentioned. We are told that a child, nursed by a Spartan woinan, never cried. This we consider as a sort of test of the tuition of the earliest years. If two children are equally free from disease and acute pain, the one that cries least, we way pretty safely con

clude, is the one that has had the best nurse; the one that cries most, is the one that has had the worst. The peculiarity of the Romans was still greater. They gave the management of the nursery to men; at least as far as the boys were concerned; for of their mode of educating girls they have left us hardly any information, excepting that we know the Roman matrons were often persons of the highest accomplishments, and that the elegant language of some of the finest Roman orators is said to have been derived from the elegant conversation of their mothers. The men thus employed were in general trained in the family for that very purpose; in every discipline calculated to give them the highest moral and intellectual excellence, which the education of the times was competent to bestow. Though slaves, they were of that order of slaves, of whom Tiro, the bosom friend and correspondent of the Roman orator, was one; that is, one of the most accomplished men whom the most accomplished age of Rome produced. But to this subject we shall at a future time revert. We meditate a careful consideration of that most important part of education, the education which commences at the hour of birth, and extends to the first six or seven years of the life; and the choice of the minds on which the discipline of the nursery depends, will then form a most important topic. In the mean time, it will be of great importance to receive the contributions of our correspondents, on this subject; especially letters containing the results of experience; and the facts which have been remarked by intelligent observers.

Such are the peculiar objects to which it is the opinion of Mrs. Cappe that the education afforded in the charity schools should be directed. The classes of girls whom she considers as in a peculiar manner pointed out for reception into these schools are five.

1st. The offspring of illicit connections, where the mother is in misery, or may have married a man other than the father, or from the feeling of disgrace would take means lawful or unlawful for detaching herself from the child. On this, however, we should remark, that the first of these cases appears with equal propriety as any other, to belong to the parochial class. In the two last, in which there might be no parochial claim, deliverance from the parent might notwithstanding be desirable in the highest degree. It might be so no less, when the child is kept by the father, and he marries a woman who is not the mother. This is very often a case of complicated misery.

2. Mrs. Cappe mentions in the second place, the orphans who are left destitute by parents, who have lived in not the lowest situations of life.