world, and rat-catchers, and cats, otherwise our habits of
benevolence and sympathy would be utterly destroyed. Children, though
they must perceive the necessity for destroying certain animals need
not be themselves executioners; they should not conquer the natural
repugnance to the sight of the struggles of pain, and the convulsions
of death; their aversion of being the cause of pain should be
preserved, both by principle and habit. Those who have not been
habituated to the bloody form of cruelty, can never fix their eye upon
her without shuddering; even those to whom she may have, in some
instances, been early familiarized, recoil from her appearance in any
shape to which they have not been accustomed. At one of the
magnificent shows with which Pompey[89] entertained the Roman people
for five days successively, the populace enjoyed the death of wild
beasts; five hundred lions were killed; but, on the last day, when
twenty elephants were put to death, the people, unused to the sight,
and moved by the lamentable howlings of these animals, were seized
with sudden compassion; they execrated Pompey himself for being the
author of so much cruelty.

Charity for the poor, is often inculcated in books for children; but
how is this virtue to be actually brought into practice in childhood?
Without proper objects of charity are selected by the parents,
children have no opportunities of discovering them; they have not
sufficient knowledge of the world to distinguish truth from falsehood
in the complaints of the distressed: nor have they sufficiently
enlarged views to discern the best means of doing good to their
fellow-creatures. They may give away money to the poor, but they do
not always feel the value of what they give: they give counters:
supplied with all the necessaries and luxuries of life, they have no
use for money; they feel no privation; they make no sacrifice in
giving money away, or at least, none worthy to be extolled as heroic.
When children grow up, they learn the value of money; their generosity
will then cost them rather more effort, and yet can be rewarded only
with the same expressions of gratitude, with the same blessings from
the beggar, or the same applause from the spectator.

Let us put charity out of the question, and suppose that the
generosity of children is displayed in making presents to their
companions, still there are difficulties. These presents are usually
baubles, which at the best can encoura