Lord Chesterfield's Letters, as a most elegant view of heathen
mythology. But if there be any danger that the first volume should
introduce the remainder of Lord Chesterfield's work to the
inexperienced reader, we should certainly forbear the experiment: it
would be far better for a young man never to be acquainted with a
single heathen deity, than to purchase Lord Chesterfield's classical
knowledge at the hazard of contamination from his detestable system of
morals. Without his Lordship's assistance, Mrs. Monsigny's Mythology
can _properly_ initiate the young pupil of either sex into the
mysteries of ancient fables. The notes to Potter's AEschylus, are also
well suited to our purpose. In Dr. Darwin's "Botanic Garden," there
are some beautiful poetic allusions to ancient gems and ancient
fables, which must fix themselves in the memory or in the imagination
of the pupil. The sooner they are read, the better; we have felt the
advantage of putting them into the hands of a boy of nine or ten years
old. The ear should be formed to English as well as to Latin poetry.

Classical poetry, without the knowledge of mythology, is
unintelligible: if children study the one, they must learn the other.
Divested of the charms of poetry, and considered without classical
prepossession, mythology presents a system of crimes and absurdities,
which no allegorical, metaphysical, or literal interpreters of modern
times, can perfectly reconcile to common sense, or common morality;
but our poets have naturalized ancient fables, so that mythology is
become essential even to modern literature. The associations of taste,
though arbitrary, are not easily changed in a nation whose literature
has attained to a certain pitch of refinement, and whose critical
judgments must consequently have been for some generations
traditional. There are subjects of popular allusion, which poets and
orators regard as common property; to dispossess them of these, seems
impracticable, after time has sanctioned the prescriptive right. But
new knowledge, and the cultivation of new sciences, present objects of
poetic allusion which, skilfully managed by men of inventive genius,
will oppose to the habitual reverence for antiquity, the charms of
novelty united to the voice of philosophy.[7]

In education we must, however, consider the actual state of manners in
that world in which our pupils are to live, as well as our wishes or
our hopes of its gradual improvement.[8] With