nd of reverie, where warmth comes not from the sun
but from the heart, where man is more noticeable than nature,--that
chaste and vigorous world, in which will plays a greater part than
sensation, and thought has more power than instinct,--in short, the
whole romantic cycle of German and Northern poetry, awoke little by
little in my memory and laid claim upon my sympathy. It is a poetry of
bracing quality, and acts upon one like a moral tonic. Strange charm of
imagination! A twig of pine-wood and a few spider-webs are enough to
make countries, epochs, and nations live again before her.

January 6th, 1853.--Self-government with tenderness,--here you have the
condition of all authority over children. The child must discover in us
no passion, no weakness of which he can make use; he must feel himself
powerless to deceive or to trouble us; then he will recognize in us his
natural superiors, and he will attach a special value to our kindness,
because he will respect it. The child who can rouse in us anger, or
impatience, or excitement, feels himself stronger than we, and a child
respects strength only. The mother should consider herself as her
child's sun, a changeless and ever radiant world, whither the small
restless creature, quick at tears and laughter, light, fickle,
passionate, full of storms, may come for fresh stores of light, warmth,
and electricity, of calm and of courage. The mother represents goodness,
providence, law; that is to say, the divinity, under that form of it
which is accessible to childhood. If she is herself passionate, she will
inculcate in her child a capricious and despotic God, or even several
discordant gods. The religion of a child depends on what its mother and
its father are, and not on what they say. The inner and unconscious
ideal which guides their life is precisely what touches the child;
their words, their remonstrances, their punishments, their bursts of
feeling even, are for him merely thunder and comedy; what they
worship--this it is which his instinct divines and reflects.

The child sees what we are, behind what we wish to be. Hence his
reputation as a physiognomist. He extends his power as far as he can
with each of us; he is the most subtle of diplomatists. Unconsciously he
passes under the influence of each person about him, and reflects it
while transforming it after his his own nature. He is a magnifying
mirror. This is why the first principle of education is, Train yourself;