writer in Blackwood, "makes room for thought, which those children miss who have no formalities to observe, no customs to respect, who blurt out every irrelevance, who interpose at will with question and opinion as it enters the brain. Children don't learn to talk by chattering to one another, and saying what comes uppermost. Mere listening with intelligence involves an exercise of mental speech, and observant silence opens the pores of the mind as impatient demands for explanation never do."
This is true, inasmuch as it is not the child who is encouraged to talk continually who in the end learns how to arrange and express his ideas. Nor does the fretful desire to be told at once what everything means imply the active mind which parents so fondly suppose; but rather a languid percipience, unable to decipher the simplest causes for itself. Yet where shall we turn to look for the "observant silence," so highly recommended? The young people who observed and were silent have passed away,—little John Ruskin being assuredly the last of the species,—and their places are filled by those to whom observation and silence are alike unknown. This is the
