us sensibility, deranged digestion,
disordered bowels, defective nutrition, and, lastly, _death_, at the
very time when the interest excited by the mental precocity was at its
height.

Such, however, is the ignorance of the majority of parents and teachers
on all physiological subjects, that when one of these infant prodigies
dies from erroneous treatment, it is not unusual to publish a memoir of
his life, that other parents and teachers may see by what means such
transcendent qualities were called forth. Dr. Brigham refers to a memoir
of this kind, in which the history of a child, aged four years and
eleven months, is narrated as approved by "several judicious persons,
ministers and others, all of whom united in the request that it might be
published, and all agreed in the opinion that a knowledge of the manner
in which the child was treated, together with the results, would be
profitable to both parents and children, and a benefit to the cause of
education." This infant philosopher was "taught hymns before he could
speak plainly;" "reasoned with" and constantly instructed until his last
illness, which, "_without any assignable cause_," put on a violent and
unexpected form, and carried him off!

As a _warning to others_ not to force education too soon or too fast,
this case may be truly profitable to both parents and children, and a
benefit to the cause of education; but _as an example to be followed_,
it assuredly can not be too strongly or too loudly condemned. While I
speak thus strongly, I am ready to admit that infant schools in which
physical health and moral training are duly attended to are excellent
institutions, and are particularly advantageous where parents, from want
of leisure or from other causes, are unable to bestow upon their
children that attention which their tender years require.

In youth, too, much mischief is done by the long daily periods of
attendance at school, and the continued application of mind which the
ordinary system of education requires. The law of exercise already more
than once repeated, that _long-sustained action exhausts the vital
powers of an organ_, applies as well to the brain as to the muscles.
Hence the necessity of varying the occupations of the young, and
allowing frequent intervals of active exercise in the open air, instead
of enforcing the continued confinement now so common. This exclusive
attention to mental culture fails, as might be expected, even in its
essenti