e
for the time additional excitement;--but they are neither natural nor
necessary. In all ordinary cases, Nature has made ample provision for
the supposed want, of which the craving--the natural and healthy
craving--of children for knowledge and for food, gives ample testimony.
To counteract or to weaken this natural desire would be improper;--but
artificially to _increase_ it is always dangerous. The reason is
obvious; for the excitement thus caused being unnatural, it is always
temporary; but its pernicious effects very soon become extensive and
permanent. Every physician knows, that the habitual use of stimulants in
the food of the young, weakens the tone of the stomach, palls the
appetite, creates a disrelish for plain and wholesome food, and
frequently destroys the powers of digestion for ever after. Very similar
are the effects of unnatural stimulants to the mental appetite in
training and teaching the young, when these stimulants are habitually,
or even frequently administered. Their curiosity,--their appetite for
knowledge,--is naturally so vigorous, that the repetition, or the
reading of any story, however commonplace or uninteresting to us, gives
them the sincerest pleasure, provided only that they understand and can
follow it. This is a most wise and beneficent provision of Nature, of
which parents and teachers should be careful to take advantage. It is
because of this disposition in children, that in all ordinary cases, the
simplest narrative or anecdote in ordinary life, may be successfully
employed in giving them mental strength, and in communicating permanent
moral instruction. But whenever unnatural and injudicious excitements
are used in their instruction, and the child's imagination has been
stimulated and defiled by the ideas of giants and ogres, fairies and
ghosts, the whole natural tone of the mind is destroyed, plain and even
interesting stories and narratives lose their proper attraction, and a
diseased and insatiable appetite for the marvellous and the horrible is
generally created. Even to adults, and much more to children, whose
minds have been thus abused, the plain paths of probability and truth
have lost every charm; and the study of abstract but useful subjects
becomes to them a nauseous task--an intolerable burden.

The accuracy of this analogy, we think, will readily be admitted by all.
And if so, it will at least help to illustrate, if it does not prove,
some of the important conclusions