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rational pursuits; it is within the latitude of a discriminating judgment, to abridge the mental imbecility of childhood, without quenching the natural and salutary fire of the animal spirits. To aim at those frivolous accomplishments of declamation and histrionic exhibition, which may manufacture pertness in a boy, but will never send a man into the world, is the reproach and folly of our present times. Not for such attainments do I contend; but for the timely cultivation of useful and substantial knowledge, stripped of its wilder, and as we may call them, forest shoots, by the urbanity and good temper of those who superintend its growth. Without good temper and forbearance, (if it be allowable to employ a second metaphor on one subject) every other virtue, belonging to the domestic character is cast into shadow. The colouring of sincerity, without such a mellowing infusion, darkens into a ferocious misanthropy; the parent and teacher degenerates into the pedagogue; the friend is lost in the stern mo-
