presses or
moderates every outbreak of temper, that checks the impatience of
desire, that requires and encourages self-denial, and turns the
performance of duty into pleasure,--they experience only the feeble and
fitful rule that yields to the slightest opposition, and rather
stimulates than represses the selfish manifestations of our nature." The
criticism is just. It is to parents, rather than to children, that our
educational energies should now address themselves. For what
school-polish can imitate the lustre of a youth home-reared under the
authority of a wise and commanding love? But our adult-instruction must
go deeper than a recommendation of the best scheme of household
discipline the wit of man can devise. Be the government as rigid as it
may, the children will imitate the worst portions of the characters
disclosed in the family. The selfish and worldly at heart will find it
wellnigh impossible to endow their children with high motives of action.

We cordially indorse what is said of those harpy-defilers of knowledge
known as juvenile books. A limited use of the works of Abbott,
Edgeworth, Sedgwick, and a very few others may certainly be permitted.
But the common practice of removing every occasion for effort from the
path of the young--of boning and spicing the mental aliment of our
fathers for the palates of our sons--would be a ridiculous folly, if it
were not a grievous one. Suitable reading for an average boy of ten
years may be found in the best authors. For it is well observed by Dr.
Ray, that, if the lad does not perceive the full significance of
Shakspeare's thoughts or the deepest harmony of Spenser's verse, if he
does not wholly appreciate the keen sagacity of Gibbon or the quiet
charm of Prescott, he will, nevertheless, catch glimpses of the higher
upper sphere in which a poet moves, and fix in his mind lasting images
of purity and loveliness, or he will learn on good authority the facts
of history, and feel somewhat of its grandeur and dignity. To the sort
of reading which naturally succeeds the Peter-Parley dilutions of
wisdom we can only allude to thank Dr. Ray for speaking so clearly and
to the point.

But it becomes necessary to pass over many pages which we had marked for
approving comment. In conclusion it may be said that this treatise on
Mental Hygiene is full of wholesome rebukes and valuable suggestions.
Yet the impression of New-England, or even of American life, which a
stranger migh