sary consequences of good education.

FOOTNOTES:

[110]

"Turn from the glittering bribe your scornful eye, Nor sell for gold
what gold can never buy."

_Johnson's London._

[111] Emilius.

[112] "Another spring, another race supplies." Pope's Homer.

NOTES,

CONTAINING CONVERSATIONS AND ANECDOTES OF CHILDREN.

Several years ago a mother,[113] who had a large family to educate,
and who had turned her attention with much solicitude to the subject
of education, resolved to write notes from day to day of all the
trifling things which mark the progress of the mind in childhood. She
was of opinion, that the art of education should be considered as an
experimental science, and that many authors of great abilities had
mistaken their road by following theory instead of practice. The title
of "_Practical Education_" was chosen by this lady, and prefixed to a
little book for children, which she began, but did not live to finish.
The few notes which remain of her writing, are preserved, not merely
out of respect to her memory, but because it is thought that they may
be useful. Her plan of keeping a register of the remarks of children,
has at intervals been pursued in her family; a number of these
anecdotes have been interspersed in this work; a few, which did not
seem immediately to suit the didactic nature of any of our chapters,
remain, and with much hesitation and diffidence are offered to the
public. We have selected such anecdotes as may in some measure
illustrate the principles that we have endeavoured to establish; and
we hope, that from these trifling, but genuine conversations of
children and parents, the reader will distinctly perceive the
difference, between practical and theoretic education. As some further
apology for offering them to the public, we recur to a passage in Dr.
Reid's[114] Essays, which encourages an attempt to study minutely the
minds of children.

"If we could obtain a distinct and full history of all that hath
passed in the mind of a child from the beginning of life and sensation
till it grows up to the use of reason, how its infant faculties began
to work, and how they brought forth and ripened all the various
notions, opinions, and sentiments, which we find in ourselves when we
come to be capable of reflection, this would be a treasure of natural
history which would probably give more light into the human faculties,
than all the systems of philosophers about them, from the