acute understanding, or will be able to strike into a path
of intellect that shall be truly his own.

I do not object to this destination, if temperately pursued. It is fit
that as many children as possible should have their chance of figuring
in future life in what are called the higher departments of intellect.
A certain familiar acquaintance with language and the shades of language
as a lesson, will be beneficial to all. The youth who has expended only
six months in acquiring the rudiments of the Latin tongue, will probably
be more or less the better for it in all his future life.

But seven years are usually spent at the grammar-school by those who are
sent to it. I do not in many cases object to this. The learned languages
are assuredly of slow acquisition. In the education of those who are
destined to what are called the higher departments of intellect, a long
period may advantageously be spent in the study of words, while the
progress they make in theory and dogmatical knowledge is too generally
a store of learning laid up, to be unlearned again when they reach the
period of real investigation and independent judgment. There is small
danger of this in the acquisition of words.

But this method, indiscriminately pursued as it is now, is productive
of the worst consequences. Very soon a judgment may be formed by the
impartial observer, whether the pupil is at home in the study of the
learned languages, and is likely to make an adequate progress.
But parents are not impartial. There are also two reasons why the
schoolmaster is not the proper person to pronounce: first, because,
if he pronounces in the negative, he will have reason to fear that the
parent will be offended; and secondly, because he does not like to lose
his scholar. But the very moment that it can be ascertained, that the
pupil is not at home in the study of the learned languages, and is
unlikely to make an adequate progress, at that moment he should be taken
from it.

The most palpable deficiency that is to be found in relation to the
education of children, is a sound judgment to be formed as to the
vocation or employment in which each is most fitted to excel.

As, according to the institutions of Lycurgus, as soon as a boy was
born, he was visited by the elders of the ward, who were to decide
whether he was to be reared, and would be made an efficient member of
the commonwealth, so it were to be desired that, as early as a clear
discrimination