willing to make retrenchment, and deny themselves many comforts and pleasures, to meet the expenses of a first-rate education for them, at a large, or public school. A boy is too often pronounced to be beyond home management at the age of eight, having been allowed to run wild, or at least having been under no proper control during the greater part of the day, when no longer engaged with the daily tutor. From the want of the kindly, gentle, but firm exercise of parental authority, at this early age, the boy is already the terror of the occupants of the nursery, the plague of the household, and is voted unbearable; the sentence of expulsion from home, and all its safety fences, from the watchful care and love of a parent's eye, is passed, and the young hopeful is sent off to school, and launched into the world-for such to him is the large school-with all its temptations and snares, amongst companions of every shade of character, without an anchor to hold him fast amongst the many shoals and quicksands through

which he has to steer his course and weather the storm. For at this tender age, what fixed principles of right or wrong can be expected of him, if, indeed, the only safe and high ones have

been inculcated at all? All that has been hitherto held as most sacred by him, is turned into ridicule by the careless amongst his companions, and of such will be the majority. In his sleeping-room, he will, alas! too often find himself the only one kneeling to say his prayers, and, too young to dare to be singular, and too timid to withstand the remarks which he has thereby brought on himself, he quickly, being at Rome, does as they do at Rome, and the prayers, first intended to be transferred to bed, are soon unsaid at all, or, at best, unfrequently.

The father has selected Eton, Harrow, Rugby, perhaps some celebrated private school, either because he was there himself, or some neighbouring gentleman, or friend's sons are there, without taking into consideration the disposition and apparent bent of his child's character, never reflecting that even in two brothers what may suit the one, may be of irreparable injury to the other. As the skilful physician will recommend to one patient the bracing mountain breezes, and to another, to whom they would be death, the southern climes of Italy or of France, so should discriminating judgment be shown in selecting the mental and moral atmosphere best

suited to the temperament, physical and intellectual, of the individual to be there placed, and on which rightful decision may depend the future character and tenor of his life for good or for evil, in making him a blessing or a curse to himself and those around him. An influence which will extend to generations long after he has himself been laid and forgotten in the grave.

The firmly rooted oak can stand, unmoved and unhurt, the blasts of a thousand storms, whilst many another fair forest tree loses first one and then another limb, and at last, shaken by each succeeding gale, is uprooted by the tempest, and laid even with the ground. And is it not so with the human race? whilst one man with strong mind and determined will can, by aid of high, holy, and fixed principles, pass comparatively unscathed through the seductions and allurements so fatal to others, the man of kind and generous nature, but of weaker mental powers, easily swayed by the opinions of others, will follow a multitude to do evil. And if this be, as doubtless it is, undeniably true of persons of mature age, how much more so of the young and inexperienced; does it not therefore behove all parents and guardians, as far as lies in their

power, to implant sound religious principles of action, and to give them time to work, and take at least some root, before they send their boys into the midst of the many temptations and dangers which the lesser world of school opens to them?

was,

CHAPTER XI.

"Is there a time when moments flow
More lovelily than all beside,

It is of all the times below,

A Sabbath eve at summer tide."

ANONYMOUS.

EDITH pursued her course as teacher at Marsden House, whilst Mrs. Sinclair exerted herself to procure her an eligible situation. Several offered which promised comfort, but situated as Edith for another's sake dearer to her than herself, she must prefer a high salary to the prospect of a pleasant home without it. Her youth and appearance were also not in her favour as a governess, though she had flattered herself that by fastening back her luxuriant tresses in simple bands, she had added some years to her looks.

Soon after midsummer, a negociation was en