hild, then four years old, he replied:
"Madam, if you have not begun already, you have lost those four
years. From the first smile that gleams upon an infant's cheek, your
opportunity begins."

But even in this case the education had already begun; for the child
learns by simple imitation, without effort, almost through the pores of
the skin. "A figtree looking on a figtree becometh fruitful," says
the Arabian proverb. And so it is with children; their first great
instructor is example.

However apparently trivial the influences which contribute to form the
character of the child, they endure through life. The child's character
is the nucleus of the man's; all after-education is but superposition;
the form of the crystal remains the same. Thus the saying of the poet
holds true in a large degree, "The child is father of the man;" or, as
Milton puts it, "The childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day."
Those impulses to conduct which last the longest and are rooted the
deepest, always have their origin near our birth. It is then that
the germs of virtues or vices, of feelings or sentiments, are first
implanted which determine the character for life.

The child is, as it were, laid at the gate of a new world, and opens
his eyes upon things all of which are full of novelty and wonderment. At
first it is enough for him to gaze; but by-and-by he begins to see, to
observe, to compare, to learn, to store up impressions and ideas; and
under wise guidance the progress which he makes is really wonderful.
Lord Brougham has observed that between the ages of eighteen and thirty
months, a child learns more of the material world, of his own powers,
of the nature of other bodies, and even of his own mind and other minds,
than he acquires in all the rest of his life. The knowledge which a
child accumulates, and the ideas generated in his mind, during this
period, are so important, that if we could imagine them to be afterwards
obliterated, all the learning of a senior wrangler at Cambridge, or a
first-classman at Oxford, would be as nothing to it, and would literally
not enable its object to prolong his existence for a week.

It is in childhood that the mind is most open to impressions, and ready
to be kindled by the first spark that falls into it. Ideas are then
caught quickly and live lastingly. Thus Scott is said to have received,
his first bent towards ballad literature from his mother's and
grandmother's recitations in hi