itutes "the
education of a gentleman;" and while many years are spent by a girl in
those decorative acquirements which fit her for evening parties; not an
hour is spent by either in preparation for that gravest of all
responsibilities--the management of a family. Is it that this
responsibility is but a remote contingency? On the contrary, it is sure
to devolve on nine out of ten. Is it that the discharge of it is easy?
Certainly not: of all functions which the adult has to fulfil, this is
the most difficult. Is it that each may be trusted by self-instruction
to fit himself, or herself, for the office of parent? No: not only is
the need for such self-instruction unrecognised, but the complexity of
the subject renders it the one of all others in which self-instruction
is least likely to succeed. No rational plea can be put forward for
leaving the Art of Education out of our _curriculum_. Whether as bearing
on the happiness of parents themselves, or whether as affecting the
characters and lives of their children and remote descendants, we must
admit that a knowledge of the right methods of juvenile culture,
physical, intellectual, and moral, is a knowledge of extreme importance.
This topic should be the final one in the course of instruction passed
through by each man and woman. As physical maturity is marked by the
ability to produce offspring, so mental maturity is marked by the
ability to train those offspring. _The subject which involves all other
subjects, and therefore the subject in which education should culminate,
is the Theory and Practice of Education._

In the absence of this preparation, the management of children, and more
especially the moral management, is lamentably bad. Parents either never
think about the matter at all, or else their conclusions are crude and
inconsistent. In most cases, and especially on the part of mothers, the
treatment adopted on every occasion is that which the impulse of the
moment prompts: it springs not from any reasoned-out conviction as to
what will most benefit the child, but merely expresses the dominant
parental feelings, whether good or ill; and varies from hour to hour as
these feelings vary. Or if the dictates of passion are supplemented by
any definite doctrines and methods, they are those handed down from the
past, or those suggested by the remembrances of childhood, or those
adopted from nurses and servants--methods devised not by the
enlightenment, but by the ignoranc