and serious subject it is that we have to consider!

The royal child must, of course, be trained wholly at home; that is, little princes and princesses cannot be sent to school. But, while reared in the house with their parents, the influences they are under scarcely agree with our ideas of home. The royal infant does not receive its food from the bosom first, or afterwards from the hands of its mother. She does not wash and dress it; and those sweet seasons are lost which in humbler homes are so rich in caresses and play, so fruitful in endearing influences both to mother and child. It is a thing to be remarked and praised by a whole court, if not a whole kingdom, if a royal mother is seen with her child in her arms; while the cottager's child is blessed with countless embraces between morning and night, and sleeps on its mother's arm or within reach of her eye and voice. The best trained royal child is disciplined to command of temper and manners; made to do little services for people about him, and sedulously taught that a child should be humble and docile. But the young creature is all the while taught stronger lessons by circumstances than can ever come through human lips. He sees that a number of grown persons about him are almost wholly occupied with him, and that it is their business in life to induce him to command his temper and manners. He feels that when he is bid to fetch and carry, or to do any other little service, it is not because such service is wanted, but for the sake of the training to himself. He is aware that all that concerns him every day is a matter of arrangement, and not of necessity; and a want of earnestness and of steady purpose is an inevitable consequence. This want of natural stimulus goes into his studies. I believe no solitary child gets on well with book-learning as a part of the business of every day. The best tutors, the best books, the quietest school-room, will not avail, if the child's mind be not stirred and interested by something more congenial than the grammar and sums and maps he has to study. And every royal child is solitary, however many brothers and sisters he may have older and younger than himself. He has his own servants, his own tutor, his own separate place and people, so that he can never be jostled among other children, or lead the true life of childhood. And so proceeds the education of life for him. He can never live amidst a large class of equals, with whom he can measure his powers, and from among whom he may select congenial friends. He passes his life in the presence of servants, has no occupations and no objects actually appointed to him, unless his state be that of sovereignty, in which case his position is more unfavourable still. He dies at last in the midst of that habitual solitude which disables him from conceiving, even at such a moment, of the state in which "rich and poor lie down together." Such a being may, if the utmost has been done for him, be decent in his habits, amiable in temper and manners, innocent in his pursuits, and religious in his feelings; but it is inconceivable that he can ever approach to our idea of a perfect man, with an intellect fully exercised, affections thoroughly disciplined, and every faculty educated by those influences which arise only from equal intercourse with men at large.

The home education of the pauper child is no better, though there are few who would venture to say how much worse it is. A pauper child must (I think we may say) be unfortunate in its parentage, in one way or another. If it knows its parents, they must probably be either sickly, or foolish, or idle, or dissolute; or they would not be in a state of permanent pauperism. The infant is reared (if not in the workhouse) in some unwholesome room or cellar, amidst damp and dirt, and the noises and sights of vice or folly. He is badly nursed and fed, and grows up feeble, or in a state of bodily uneasiness which worries his temper, and makes his passions excitable. He is not soothed by the constant tenderness of a decent mother, who feels it a great duty to make him as good and happy as she can, and contrives to find time and thought for that object. He tumbles in the dust of the road or the mud of the gutter, snatches food wherever he can get it, quarrels with anybody who thwarts him if he be a bold boy, and sneaks and lies if he be naturally a coward. He indulges every appetite, as a matter of course, as it arises; for he has no idea that he should not. He hates everybody who interferes with this license, and has the best liking for those who use the same license with himself. He knows nothing of any place or people but those he sees, and never dreams of any world beyond that of his own eyes. He does not know what society is, or law, or duty: and therefore, when he injures society, and comes under the inflictions of the law for gross violations of duty, he understands no more of what is done to him than if he was carried through certain ceremonies conducted in an unknown tongue. He has some dim notion of glory in dying boldly before the eyes of the crowd; so he goes to the gallows in a mocking mood, as ignorant of the true import of life and human faculties as the day he was born. Or, if not laid hold of by the law, he goes on towards his grave brawling and drinking, or half asleep in mind, and inert or diseased in body, till at last he dies as the beast dies.

Here are the two extremes. The condition about half way between them appears to me to be the most favourable, on the whole, for making the most of a human being, and best fulfilling the purposes of his life. There are stations above and below highly favourable to the attainment of excellence; but, taking in all considerations, I think the position of the well-conditioned artisan the most favourable that society affords, at least, in our own day.

There is much good in enlarged book-learning; in what is commonly called a liberal education. If united with hard and imperative labour—labour at once of head and hands—it will help to make a nobler man than can be made without it: but a liberal education, enlarged book-learning, ordinarily leads to only head work, without that labour of the hands which is the way to much wisdom. The benefits too are much confined to the individual, so that the children of the wisest statesman, or physician, or lawyer are only accidentally, if at all, the better for his advantages; while the best circumstances in the lot of the well-conditioned artisan are the inheritance and the privilege of his children.

And again, the labourer may be so placed, in regard to employment, marriage, and abode, as that he may, possessing an awakened mind, be for ever learning great and interesting things from the book of Nature and of Scripture, while he has comfort in his home, and some leisure for training his children to his own work, and whatever else may turn up, so that they may grow up intelligent, dutiful, affectionate, and able continually to improve. The surgeon, the manufacturer, and the shop-keeper on the one hand, and the street porter, the operative, and the labourer on the other, may well work out the true purposes of life; but the condition which appears to me to be the meeting point of the greatest number of good influences is that of the best order of artisans.

That condition affords the meeting point of book-knowledge, and that which is derived from personal experience. Every day's labour of hand and eye is a page opened in the best of books—the universe. When duly done, this lesson leaves time for the other method of instruction, by books. During the day hours, the earnest pupil learns of Nature by the lessons she gives in the melting fire,