at and
the small alike appear before us in the many-coloured scene of human
society, and, if we reprehend bitterly and rate a juvenile sinner
for the fault, which he scarcely understood, and assuredly had not
premeditated, we break down at once a thousand salutary boundaries,
and reduce the ideas of right and wrong in his mind to a portentous and
terrible chaos. The communicator of liberal knowledge assuredly
ought not to confound his office with that of a magistrate at
a quarter-sessions, who though he does not sit in judgment upon
transgressions of the deepest and most atrocious character, yet has
brought before him in many cases defaulters of a somewhat hardened
disposition, whose lot has been cast among the loose and the profligate,
and who have been carefully trained to a certain audacity of temper,
taught to look upon the paraphernalia of justice with scorn, and
to place a sort of honour in sustaining hard words and the lesser
visitations of punishment with unflinching nerve.

If this is the judgment we ought to pass upon the bitter and galling
and humiliating terms of reprehension apt to be made use of by the
instructor to his pupil, it is unnecessary to say a word on the subject
of chastisement. If such an expedient is ever to be had recourse to,
it can only be in cases of contumaciousness and rebellion; and then the
instructor cannot too unreservedly say to himself, "This is matter of
deep humiliation to me: I ought to have succeeded by an appeal to the
understanding and ingenuous feelings of youth; but I am reduced to a
confession of my impotence."

But the topic which, most of all, I was desirous to bring forward in
this Essay, is that of the language so customarily employed by the
impatient and irritated preceptor, "Hereafter, in a state of mature
and ripened judgment, you will thank me for the severity I now exercise
towards you."

No; it may safely be answered: that time will never arrive.

As, in one of my earlier Essays(33), I undertook to shew that there is
not so much difference between the talents of one man and another as has
often been apprehended, so we are guilty of a gross error in the way
in which we divide the child from the man, and consider him as if he
belonged to a distinct species of beings.

(33) Essay II.

I go back to the recollections of my youth, and can scarcely find where
to draw the line between ineptness and maturity. The thoughts that
occurred to me, as far back as