actuated by. In the rest and
liberty of my life at this time, I think, whatever was best in me had
the most favorable chance of growth, and I have remained ever grateful
to the wise forbearance of the gentle authority under which I lived, for
the benefit as well as the enjoyment I derived from the time I passed in
Edinburgh.

I think that more harm is frequently done by over than by under culture
in the moral training of youth. Judicious _letting alone_ is a precious
element in real education, and there are certain chords which, often
touched and made to vibrate too early, are apt to lose instead of
gaining power; to grow first weakly and morbidly sensitive, and then
hard and dull; and finally, when the full harmony of the character
depends upon their truth and depth of tone, to have lost some measure of
both under repeated premature handling.

I sometimes think that instead of beginning, as we do, with a whole
heaven-and-earth-embracing theory of duty to God and man, it might be
better to adopt with our children the method of dealing only with each
particular instance of moral obligation empirically as it occurs; with
each particular incident of life, detached, as it were, from the notion
of a formal system, code, or theory of religious belief, until the
recurrence of the same rules of morality under the same governing
principle, invoked only in immediate application to some instance of
conduct or incident of personal experience, built up by degrees a body
of precedent which would have the force and efficacy of law before it
was theoretically inculcated as such. Whoever said that principles were
_moral habits_ spoke, it seems to me, a valuable truth, not generally
sufficiently recognized or acted upon in the task of education.

The only immediate result, that I can remember, of my graver turn of
thought at this time upon my conduct was a determination to give up
reading Byron's poetry. It was a great effort and a very great
sacrifice, for the delight I found in it was intense; but I was quite
convinced of its injurious effect upon me, and I came to the conclusion
that I would forego it.

"Cain" and "Manfred" were more especially the poems that stirred my
whole being with a tempest of excitement that left me in a state of
mental perturbation impossible to describe for a long time after reading
them. I suppose the great genius touched in me the spirit of our time,
which, chit as I was, was common to us both; and the