is as easily spoiled by a word out of season
as a fine porcelain vase is cracked in a furnace--to direct their ideas
of the aims of life towards worthy and unselfish ends, to foster true
loyalty because of God from whom all authority comes--and this lesson has
its pathetic poignancy for us in the history of our English martyrs--to
show the claims that our country has upon the devotion of its sons and
daughters, and to inspire some feeling of responsibility for its honour,
especially to show the supreme worth of character and self-sacrifice,
all these things may and must be taught in this middle period of
children's education if they are to have any strong hold upon them in
after life. It is a stubborn age in which teaching has to be on strong
lines and deep ones; when the evolution of character is in the critical
period that is to make or mar its future, it needs a strong hand over
it, with power both to control and to support, a strong mind to command
its respect, strong convictions to impress it, and strong principles on
which to test its own young strength; and all those who have the
privilege of teaching history to children of this age have an
incomparable opportunity of training mind and character. The strength of
our own convictions, the brightness of our own ideals, the fibre of our
patriotism and loyalty will tell in the measure of two endowments, our
own spirit of self-sacrifice and our tact. Children will detect the
least false note if self-sacrifice is preached without experimental
knowledge; and as it is the most contradictory of all ages, it takes
every resource of tact to pilot it through channels for which there is
no chart. The masterpieces of educators are wrought in this difficult
but most interesting material.

Those who come after them will see what they have done, they cannot see
it themselves. With less difficulty perhaps, because reason is more
developed and the hot-headed and irritable phase of character is passing
away, they will be able to apply the principles which have been laid
down. With less difficulty, that is to say against less resistance, but
not with less responsibility or even with less anxiety. For the nearer
the work approaches to its completion and the more perfectly it has been
begun, the more deeply must anyone approaching to lay hand upon it feel
the need for great reverence, and self-restraint, and patience, and
vigilance, not to spoil by careless interference that which is re