e readiness of belief in children will always be proportioned to
their experience of the veracity of those with whom they converse;
consequently children, who live with those who speak truth to them,
will scarcely ever be inclined to doubt the veracity of strangers.
Such trials of the judgment of our pupils should never be permitted.
Why should the example of lying be set before the honest minds of
children, who are far from silly when they show simplicity? They guide
themselves by the best rules, by which even a philosopher in similar
circumstances could guide himself. The things asserted are
extraordinary, but the children believe them, because they have never
had any experience of the falsehood of human testimony.

The Socratic mode of reasoning is frequently practised upon children.
People arrange questions artfully, so as to bring them to whatever
conclusion they please. In this mode of reasoning, much depends upon
getting the first move; the child has very little chance of having it,
his preceptor usually begins first with a peremptory voice, "Now
answer me this question!" The pupil, who knows that the
interrogatories are put with a design to entrap him, is immediately
alarmed, and instead of giving a direct, candid answer to the
question, is always looking forward to the possible consequences of
his reply; or he is considering how he may evade the snare that is
laid for him. Under these circumstances he is in imminent danger of
learning the shuffling habits of cunning; he has little chance of
learning the nature of open, manly investigation.

Preceptors, who imagine that it is necessary to put on very grave
faces, and to use much learned apparatus in teaching the art of
reasoning, are not nearly so likely to succeed as those who have the
happy art of encouraging children to lay open their minds freely, and
who can make every pleasing trifle an exercise for the understanding.
If it be playfully pointed out to a child that he reasons ill, he
smiles and corrects himself; but you run the hazard of making him
positive in errour, if you reprove or ridicule him with severity. It
is better to seize the subjects that accidentally arise in
conversation, than formally to prepare subjects for discussion.

"The king's stag hounds," (says Mr. White of Selborne, in his
entertaining observations on quadrupeds,[89]) "the king's stag hounds
came down to Alton, attended by a huntsman and six yeoman prickers
with horns, to try fo