parents have more ability and inclination to send their children to school; much more than in manufacturing districts, and also-though in a less degree-more than in agricultural ones, where the tillers are not proprietors.

If in Scotland the children are sent to school, where the parents have not the advantages I have been speaking of, it is chiefly because their labour can be turned to no account at home. Send among them manufacturers, or farmers on a large scale, and you may indeed substitute Sunday-schools or other modes of instructing them; but the ordinary parish schools will be neglected. The influence of our schools in this neighbourhood can never be understood, if this, their connection with the state of landed property, be overlooked. In fact, that influence is not striking. The people are not habitually religious in the common sense of the word, much less godly. The effect of their schooling is chiefly seen by the activity with which the young persons emigrate, and the success attending it; and, at home, by a general orderliness and gravity, with habits of independence and self-respect. Nothing obsequious or fawning is ever to be seen amongst them.

1

It may be added, that this ability (from the two causes, land and schools) of giving their children instruction contributes to spread a respect for scholarship through the country. If in any family one of the children should be quicker at his book, or fonder of it than others, he is often marked out in consequence for the profession of a clergyman. This (before the mercantile or manufacturing employments held out such flattering hopes) very generally happened; so that the schools of the North were the great nurseries of curates, several of whom got forward in their profession, some with and others without the help of a University Education; and, in all instances, such connection of families (all the members of which lived in the humblest and plainest

manner, working with their own hands as labourers) with a learned and dignified profession, assisted—and still does, though in a less degree-not a little to elevate their feelings, and conferred importance on them in their own eyes. But I must stop. Begin your education at the top go in the right course, and the Wisdom and justice are the only true Preach this, and may

of society; let the head tail will follow.

sources of the revenue of a people. you not preach in vain !

Wishing you success in every good work, I remain your affectionate friend, W. WORDSWORTH."

Two years previously Wordsworth wrote a long letter to a friend-whose name his nephew does not mention, and whom it is probably impossible now to find out,-on the general subject of Education, but especially on the education of that friend's daughter. The following are extracts from it:

‘. . . The child being the child of a man like you, what I have to say will lie in small compass.

I consider the facts which you mention as indicative of what is commonly called sensibility, and of quickness and talent, and shall take for granted that they are so; you add that the child is too much noticed by grown people, and apprehend selfishness.

Such a child will almost always be too much noticed; and it is scarcely possible entirely to guard against the evil hence vanity, and under bad management selfishness of the worst kind. And true it is, that under better and even the best management, such constitutions are liable to selfishness; not showing itself in the shape of tyranny, caprice, avarice, meanness, envy, skulking, and base selfreference; but selfishness of a worthier kind, yet still rightly called by that name.

But as such

Vanity is not the necessary or even natural growth of such a temperament; quite the contrary. Such a child, if neglected and suffered to run wild, would probably be entirely free from vanity, owing to the liveliness of its feelings, and the number of its resources. It would be by nature independent and sufficient for itself. children, in these times in particular, are rarely if ever neglected, or rather rarely if ever not far too much noticed, it is a hundred to one your child will have more vanity than you could wish. This is one evil to be guarded against. Formerly children were very carelessly brought up; at present they too early and too habitually feel their own importance, from the solicitude and unremitting attendance which is bestowed upon them. A child like yours, I believe, unless under the wisest guidance, would prosper most where she was the least noticed and the least made of; I mean more than this,—where she received the least cultivation. She does not stand in need of the stimulus of praise (as much as can benefit her, i.e., as much as her nature requires, it will be impossible to withhold from her); nor of being provoked to exertion, or, even if she be not injudiciously thwarted, to industry.

Other evils will also beset her, arising more from herself. . . . I believe they will probably be as follows: first, as mentioned before, a considerable portion of vanity. But if the child be not constrained too much, and be left sufficiently to her own pursuits, and be not too anxiously tended, and have not her mind planted over by art with likings that do not spring naturally up in it, this will by the liveliness of her independent enjoyment almost entirely disappear, and she will become modest and diffident; and being not apt from the same ruling cause-I mean the freshness of her own sensations to compare herself with

others, she will hold herself in too humble estimation. But she will probably still be selfish; and this brings me to the explanation of what I hinted at before, viz., in what manner she will be selfish.

It appears, then, to me that all the permanent evils which you have to apprehend for your daughter, supposing you should live to educate her yourself, may be referred to this principle, an undue predominance of present objects over absent ones, which, as she will surely be distinguished by an extreme love of those about her, will produce a certain restlessness of mind, calling perpetually for proofs of ever-living regard and affection; she must be loved as much, and in the same way as she loves, or she will not be satisfied. Hence, quickness in taking offence, petty jealousies, and apprehensions lest she is neglected or loses ground in people's love, a want of a calm and steady sense of her own merits, to secure her from these fits of imagined slights; for in the first place she will, as is hinted at before, be in general deficient in this just estimation of her own worth, and will further be apt to forget everything of that kind in the present sense of supposed injury. She will (all which is referable to the same cause) in the company of others have too constant a craving for sympathy, up to a height beyond what her companions are capable of bestowing; this will often be mortifying to herself, and burthensome to others; and should circumstances be untoward, and her mind be not sufficiently furnished with ideas and knowledge, this craving would be most pernicious to herself, preying upon mind and body. She will be too easily pleased, apt to overrate the merits of new acquaintances, subject to fits of over-love and over-joy, in absence from those she loves full of fears and apprehensions, &c., injurious to her health; her passions for the most part will be happy and good, but she will be too little

mistress of them.

The distinctions which her intellect will

make will be apt, able, and just, but in conversation she will be prone to overshoot herself, and commit eloquent blunders through eagerness. In fine, her manners will be frank and ardent, but they will want dignity; and a want of dignity will be the general defect of her character.

Something of this sort of character, which I have thus loosely sketched, and something of the sort of selfishness to which I have adverted, it seems to me that under the best management you have reason to apprehend for your daughter. If she should happen to be an only child, or the only sister of brothers, who would probably idolise her, one might prophesy almost with absolute confidence that most of these qualities would be found in her in a great degree. How then is the evil to be softened down or prevented? Assuredly not by mortifying her, which is the course commonly pursued with such tempers; nor by preaching to her about her own defects; nor by overrunning her infancy with books about good boys and girls, and bad boys and girls, and all that trumpery; but (and this is the only important thing I have to say upon the subject) by putting her in the way of acquiring, without measure or limit, such knowledge as will lead her out of herself, such knowledge as is interesting for its own sake; things known because they are interesting, not interesting because they are known; in a word, by leaving her at liberty to luxuriate in such feelings and images as will feed her mind in silent pleasure. This nourishment is contained in fairy tales, romances, the best biographies and histories, and such parts of natural history relating to the powers and appearances of the earth and elements, and the habits and structure of animals, as belong to it, not as an art or science, but as a magazine of form and feeling. This kind of knowledge is purely good, a direct antidote to every evil to be apprehended, and