DEAR CHILDREN:--By the _heart_, I mean the moral feelings, dispositions, and affections. And by _cultivating_ the heart, I mean directing much attention to restraining, regulating, and purifying all its exercises. This may be said to lie at the foundation of all duty and all happiness. Were your intellectual powers cultivated with all possible care and success, and your moral faculties neglected, you might be polished and elegant demons; but would be miserable yourselves, and a curse to society. Whether, therefore, you regard your own present enjoyment, and everlasting welfare, or the happiness of those around you, you cannot too early remember the great purpose for which you were sent into the world, and the relations which you sustain as rational, social, and immortal creatures. You cannot too early or too diligently learn to restrain your passions; to deny yourselves; and to cultivate those benevolent, meek, humble, and amiable habits, which are indispensable to tranquillity and peace of mind, and which alone can prepare you to adorn and bless the social circles with which you may be connected. I draw your attention the more earnestly to this great subject because I see so many young people who appear never to think of the importance, or even utility of this part of their education. If you have not learned, dear children, that you are by nature prone to be proud, vain, selfish, envious, irascible, sensual, malignant, and, in a word, to indulge the various appetites and passions which tend to destroy your own peace, and to invade the comfort of those around you; if you have not discovered that this is the tendency of your nature, and that resisting it will call for much self-denial, and continual, and sometimes for agonizing effort, you have attended less to your own feelings, and habits, and less to the character of your friends and associates than I am willing to suppose.