s soon, and kept as sacred,
in the mind as possible.

With respect to the sympathy which children feel for each other, it
must be carefully managed, or it will counteract, instead of assisting
us, in education. It is natural, that those who are placed nearly in
the same circumstances, should feel alike, and sympathize with one
another; but children feel only for the present; they have few ideas
of the future; and consequently all that they can desire, either for
themselves, or for their companions, is what will _immediately_
please. Education looks to the future, and frequently we must ensure
future advantage, even at the expense of present pain or restraint.
The companion and the tutor then, supposing each to be equally good
and equally kind, must command, in a very different degree, the
sympathy of the child. It may, notwithstanding, be questioned, whether
those who are constant companions in their idle hours, when they are
_very_ young, are likely to be either as fond of one another when they
grow up, or even as happy whilst they are children, as those are who
spend less time together. Whenever the humours, interests, and
passions of others cross our own, there is an end of sympathy, and
this happens almost every hour in the day with children; it is
generally supposed, that they learn to live in friendship with each
other, and to bear with one another's little faults habitually; that
they even reciprocally cure these faults, and learn, by experience,
those principles of honour and justice on which society depends. We
may be deceived in this reasoning by a false analogy.

We call the society of children, _society in miniature_; the
proportions of the miniature are so much altered, that it is by no
means an accurate resemblance of that which exists in the _civilized_
world. Amongst children of different ages, strength, and talents,
there must always be tyranny, injustice, and that worst species of
inequality, which arises from superior force on the one side, and
abject timidity on the other. Of this, the spectators of juvenile
disputes and quarrels are sometimes sensible, and they hastily
interfere and endeavour to part the combatants, by pronouncing certain
moral sentences, such as, "Good boys never quarrel; brothers must
love and help one another." But these sentences seldom operate as a
charm upon the angry passions; the parties concerned, hearing it
asserted that they must love one another, at the very instant wh