elasticity in her firmness to
prevent it from degenerating into obstinacy. It is not the firmness of
the tree that bends without breaking, but the firmness of a certain
long-eared animal whose force of character has impressed itself on the
common mind and become proverbial.

Jean Paul says if "_Pas trop gouverner_" is the best rule in politics,
it is equally true of discipline.

But if the child is unhappy who has none of his rights respected,
equally wretched is the little despot who has more than his own
rights, who has never been taught to respect the rights of others, and
whose only conception of the universe is that of an absolute monarchy
in which he is sole ruler.

"Children rarely love those who spoil them, and never trust them.
Their keen young sense detects the false note in the character and
draws its own conclusions, which are generally very just."

The very best theoretical statement of a wise disciplinary method that
I know is Herbert Spencer's. "Let the history of your domestic rule
typify, in little, the history of our political rule; at the outset,
autocratic control, where control is really needful; by and by an
incipient constitutionalism, in which the liberty of the subject gains
some express recognition; successive extensions of this liberty of the
subject; gradually ending in parental abdication."

We must not expect children to be too good; not any better than we
ourselves, for example; no, nor even as good. Beware of hothouse
virtue. "Already most people recognize the detrimental results of
intellectual precocity; but there remains to be recognized the truth
that there is a moral precocity which is also detrimental. Our higher
moral faculties, like our higher intellectual ones, are comparatively
complex. By consequence, they are both comparatively late in their
evolution. And with the one as with the other, a very early activity
produced by stimulation will be at the expense of the future
character."

In these matters the child has a right to expect examples. He lives in
the senses; he can only learn through object lessons, can only
pass from the concrete example of goodness to a vision of abstract
perfection.

"O'er wayward childhood wouldst thou hold firm rule.
And sun thee in the light of happy faces?
Love, Hope and Patience, these must be thy graces,
And in thine own heart let them first keep school."

Yes, "in thine own heart let them first keep school!" I cannot see why