and
especially boys, will have some out-of-door pursuits; and it was my duty
to lead them to choose such pursuits as combined future utility with
present innocence. Each his flower-bed, little garden, plantation of
trees; rabbits, dogs, asses, horses, pheasants and hares; hoes, spades,
whips, guns; always some object of lively interest, and as much
_earnestness_ and _bustle_ about the various objects as if our living
had solely depended upon them. I made everything give way to the great
object of making their lives happy and innocent. I did not know what
they might be in time, or what might be my lot; but I was resolved not
to be the cause of their being unhappy _then_, let what might become of
us afterwards. I was, as I am, of opinion, that it is injurious to the
mind to press _book-learning_ upon it at an _early age_: I always felt
pain for poor little things, set up, before 'company,' to repeat verses,
or bits of plays, at six or eight years old. I have sometimes not known
which way to look, when a mother (and, too often, a father), whom I
could not but respect on account of her fondness for her child, has
forced the feeble-voiced eighth wonder of the world, to stand with its
little hand stretched out, spouting the _soliloquy of Hamlet_, or some
such thing. I remember, on one occasion, a little pale-faced creature,
only five years old, was brought in, after the _feeding_ part of the
dinner was over, first to take his regular half-glass of vintner's
brewings, commonly called wine, and then to treat us to a display of his
wonderful genius. The subject was a speech of a robust and bold youth,
in a Scotch play, the title of which I have forgotten, but the speech
began with, 'My name is Norval: on the Grampian Hills my father fed his
flocks...' And this in a voice so weak and distressing as to put me in
mind of the plaintive squeaking of little pigs when the sow is lying on
them. As we were going home (one of my boys and I) he, after a silence
of half a mile perhaps, rode up close to the side of my horse, and said,
'Papa, where _be_ the _Grampian Hills_?' 'Oh,' said I, 'they are in
Scotland; poor, barren, beggarly places, covered with heath and rushes,
ten times as barren as Sherril Heath.' 'But,' said he, 'how could that
little boy's father feed _his flocks_ there, then?' I was ready to
tumble off the horse with laughing.

284. I do not know any thing much more distressing to the spectators
than exhibitions of this sort