ation, or
depress inferiority.

YOUNG girls, who have more vivacity than understanding, will often make
a sprightly figure in conversation. But this agreeable talent for
entertaining others, is frequently dangerous to themselves, nor is it by
any means to be desired or encouraged very early in life. This
immaturity of wit is helped on by frivolous reading, which will produce
its effect in much less time than books of solid instruction; for the
imagination is touched sooner than the understanding; and effects are
more rapid as they are more pernicious. Conversation should be the
_result_ of education, not the _precursor_ of it. It is a golden fruit,
when suffered to grow gradually on the tree of knowledge; but if
precipitated by forced and unnatural means, it will in the end become
vapid, in proportion as it is artificial.

THE best effects of a careful and religious education are often very
remote: they are to be discovered in future scenes, and exhibited in
untried connexions. Every event of life will be putting the heart into
fresh situations, and making demands on its prudence, its firmness, its
integrity, or its piety. Those whose business it is to form it, can
foresee none of these situations; yet, as far as human wisdom will
allow, they must enable it to provide for them all, with an humble
dependence on the divine assistance. A well-disciplined soldier must
learn and practise all his evolutions, though he does not know on what
service his leader may command him, by what foe he shall be attacked,
nor what mode of combat the enemy may use.

ONE great art of education consists in not suffering the feelings to
become too acute by unnecessary awakening, nor too obtuse by the want
of exertion. The former renders them the source of calamity, and totally
ruins the temper; while the latter blunts and debases them, and produces
a dull, cold, and selfish spirit. For the mind is an instrument, which,
if wound too high, will lose its sweetness, and if not enough strained,
will abate of its vigour.

HOW cruel is it to extinguish by neglect or unkindness, the precious
sensibility of an open temper, to chill the amiable glow of an ingenuous
soul, and to quench the bright flame of a noble and generous spirit!
These are of higher worth than all the documents of learning, of dearer
price than all the advantages, which can be derived from the most
refined and artificial mode of education.

BUT sensibility and delicacy, and an