because, if it conveys any distinct ideas, it
implies some which are, perhaps, inconsistent with real happiness.

Whilst our pupils occupy and amuse themselves with observation,
experiment, and invention, we must take care that they have a
sufficient variety of manual and bodily exercises. A turning-lathe,
and a work-bench, will afford them constant active employment; and
when young people can invent, they feel great pleasure in the
execution of their own plans. We do not speak from vague theory; we
have seen the daily pleasures of the work-bench, and the persevering
eagerness with which young people work in wood, and brass, and iron,
when tools are put into their hands at a proper age, and when their
understanding has been previously taught the simple principles of
mechanics. It is not to be expected that any exhortations we could
use, could prevail upon a father, who happens to have no taste for
mechanics, or for chemistry, to spend any of his time in his
children's laboratory, or at their work-bench; but in his choice of a
tutor, he may perhaps supply his own defects; and he will consider,
that even by interesting himself in the daily occupations of his
children, he will do more in the advancement of their education, than
can be done by paying money to a hundred masters.

We do not mean to confine young people to the laboratory or the
work-bench, for exercise; the more varied exercises, the better. Upon
this subject we shall speak more fully hereafter: we have in general
recommended all trials of address and dexterity, except games of
chance, which we think should be avoided, as they tend to give a taste
for gambling; a passion, which has been the ruin of so many young men
of promising talents, of so many once happy families, that every
parent will think it well worth his while to attend to the smallest
circumstances in education, which can prevent its seizing hold of the
minds of his children.

In children, as in men, a taste for gaming arises from the want of
better occupation, or of proper emotion to relieve them from the pains
and penalties of idleness; both the vain and indolent are prone to
this taste from different causes. The idea of personal merit is
insensibly connected with what is called _good luck_, and before
avarice absorbs every other feeling, vanity forms no inconsiderable
part of the charm which fixes such numbers to the gaming-table.
Indolent persons are fond of games of chance, because they fe