us; and which bids fair to wither up, during another generation, the
youth and hopes of England. Such infatuation is equal to that of the
husbandman who should wish to deprive the year of its spring, and the
plants of their blossoms, in hopes of a more nutritious and abundant
harvest.

"The inward principle required to give habits of industry,
temperance, good temper, and so forth, is the express intention
of being industrious, temperate, and gentle, and regulating one's
actions accordingly. But the inward principle exercised by a
routine of irksome restraints, submitted to passively on no other
grounds but the laws of authority, or the influence of fashion,
or imposed merely as the necessary condition of childhood, may be
only that of yielding to present impression. He who, in youth,
yields passively to fear or force, in after life may be found to
yield equally to pleasure or temper; the habit of yielding to
present impressions, in the first case, prepares the mind for
yielding to them in the second, without any attempt at
self-control.

"The necessity of reducing the young, in the first instance, to
implicit obedience, and the utility of a strict routine of
duties, is not hereby disputed. The impressions arising from
every species of restraint and coercion, whether from the command
of another or our own reason, being almost invariably unpleasant
at first, it is necessary (on the theory of habit) to weaken
their force by repetition, before the principle of
self-government can be expected to act. But the point insisted on
is, that weakening the pain of restraint and of submission to
rules, will not necessarily create an intention of adhering to
the rules, when coercion ceases. An intention is a mental action,
and even when excited, it is neither impossible nor uncommon that
the practice of forming intentions may be accompanied by the
practice of breaking them; and as the shame and remorse of so
doing wear out through frequency, a character of weakness is
formed."

Although we regret the omission of some observations on waste and
prodigality--remarks in which the most profound knowledge of the best
authorities on this subject is tempered with a strict attention to
practical interest, and a minute acquaintance with the affairs of ordinary
life--we proceed to the chapters on "Frivolity and Ignorance," wit