native, and
yet she is ill-tempered and shrewish if circumstances happen to cross
her inclination. Here is a young man who is possessed of a fine
collegiate education, and who is also an excellent musician. Yet he can
be rude and disrespectful to his mother, insolent to his father,
overbearing and arrogant towards servants and subordinates, and a
perfect boor to his younger brothers and sisters. Both these young
persons have uncultivated spirits. So we see that the cultivation of the
intellectual nature, the acquirement of accomplishments, the practice of
any art, the advantages of travel, the surroundings of elegance, may or
may not tend to the genuine culture of the spirit; and as wise and
earnest parents and teachers perceive this truth, they realize more and
more that the great problem of culture, alike for parent and teacher, is
how to develop the moral sentiment.

LETTER IX.

RELIGIOUS CULTURE AND DUTY.

_My Dear Daughter:_--I have endeavored in my previous letters to give
you a kind of outline series of directions and instructions in matters
that pertain to the ordinary every day duties of life. I have spoken of
the motives that should influence your actions, and have tried to show
you that all truly lovely and beautiful conduct must have a basis in the
moral sentiment. I have reserved till this last letter what I have to
say to you on the most important subject of all: the infinitely
momentous subject of religious culture and duty.

In the first place I must explain that there is a great difference
between the methods and circumstances of religious instruction now and
those which surrounded the youth of the maturer generation. When people
of the age of your parents were young, the habits of family life were
such that religious observances held a place of first importance. All
household affairs were arranged with reference to morning and evening
worship, which consisted of singing, reading the Bible, and prayer. No
matter how much work was to be done, the family must rise in time to
allow for the performance of this service. Children heard so much about
God, and heaven, and the life beyond death, that often a morbid and
unnatural frame of mind was induced. Parents and instructors often
forgot to make allowance for the fact that youth naturally and rightly
loves and enjoys this life, and rightly and naturally dreads death. So
much was said about the other world that it seemed almost a sin to think
abo