thod, bringing up children in a mere manual drill,
crimping them into a mould of mincing proprieties, and making them speak
with an automaton click. Perhaps the most headlong young men that can be
found, are those who spent their early days in a sort of strait jacket
with a clock-work movement. They were wound up so tight when they were
boys, that now they take great pleasure in going fast, and running down.
In other words, having felt their early training to be mere _training_,
the moment they strip off the constraint, they plunge into the opposite
extreme of _no_ constraint. Nay, I believe that even children who are
left to their own instincts, and shoved out into the world to take care
of themselves, are generally better balanced, and go with steadier
motion than these. Of course, however, neither extreme is right. There
is such a thing, I say once more, as Home Education, involving all
necessary training and true constraint; and yet not oppressively felt as
such, because it is free, informal, and respects the spontaneity of the
childish nature. But, whether our Home Education be formal or informal,
direct or indirect, there is one kind of education which we are sure to
impart. It is the education of example, silent, effective, stronger and
more easily apprehended than any set of maxims. I would we were all duly
impressed with the responsibilities of Home as they appear in this
light; might feel, however we may be absorbed in business or in
pleasure, that the young mind and heart are receiving influences, and
growing into expressions that in some way will surprise us.

In the next place I observe, that if we display our real dispositions
and characters at home, we should recognize it practically as _a sphere
of moral discipline_. The family is a divine ordinance--the Home is an
institution of God, forecast in the peculiarities of our very nature.
History shows no period when it did not exist, and we discover no tribe
so barbarous as to be without it. It is the foundation of all society.
It embosoms the germ and ideal of the State. According to the purity of
its relations, the intensity of its sympathies, the inviolability of its
rights, a nation's life is high or low, feeble or strong, fickle or
enduring. And if it is thus rooted in the nature and the history of man,
we may well believe that it affords some of the profoundest occasions
for that moral discipline which is the great purpose of our existence
upon the eart