s suppose a child to be educated by a variety of persons, all
differing in their tastes and tempers, and in their notions of right
and wrong; all having the power to reward and punish their common
pupil. What must this pupil become? A mixture of incongruous
characters; superstitious, enthusiastic, indolent, and perhaps
profligate: superstitious, because his own contradictory experience
would expose him to fear without reason; enthusiastic, because he
would, from the same cause, form absurd expectations; indolent,
because the _will_ of others has been the measure of his happiness,
and his own exertions have never procured him any certain reward;
profligate, because, probably from the confused variety of his moral
lessons, he has at last concluded that right and wrong are but
unmeaning words. Let us change the destiny of this child, by changing
his education. Place him under the sole care of a person of an
enlarged capacity, and a steady mind; who has formed just notions of
right and wrong; and who, in the distribution of reward and
punishment, of praise and blame, will be prompt, exact, invariable.
His pupil will neither be credulous, rash, nor profligate; and he
certainly will not be indolent; his habitual and his rational belief
will, in all circumstances, agree with each other; his hope will be
the prelude to exertion, and his fear will restrain him only in
situations where action is dangerous.

Even amongst children, we must frequently have observed a prodigious
difference in the quantity of hope and fear which is felt by those who
have been well or ill educated. An ill educated child, is in daily,
hourly, alternate agonies of hope and fear; the present never occupies
or interests him, but his soul is intent upon some future
gratification, which never pays him by its full possession. As soon as
he awakens in the morning, he recollects some promised blessing, and,
till the happy moment arrives, he is wretched in impatience: at
breakfast he is to be blessed with some toy, that he is to have the
moment breakfast is finished; and when he finds the toy does not
delight him, he is _to be blessed_ with a sweet pudding at dinner, or
with sitting up half an hour later at night than his usual bed-time.
Endeavour to find some occupation that shall amuse him, you will not
easily succeed, for he will still anticipate what you are going to say
or to do. "What will come next?" "What shall we do after this?" are,
as Mr. Williams, i