The way childhood is spent is no great matter; the evil which may find its way is not irremediable, and the good which may spring up might come later. But it is not so in those early years when a youth really begins to live. This time is never long enough for what there is to be done, and its importance demands unceasing attention; this is why I lay so much stress on the art of prolonging it. One of the best rules of good farming is to keep things back as much as possible. Let your progress also be slow and sure; prevent the youth from becoming a man all at once. While the body is growing the spirits destined to give vigour to the blood and strength to the muscles are in process of formation and elaboration. If you turn them into another channel, and permit that strength which should have gone to the perfecting of one person to go to the making of another, both remain in a state of weakness and the work of nature is unfinished. The workings of the mind, in their turn, are affected by this change, and the mind, as sickly as the body, functions languidly and feebly. Length and strength of limb are not the same thing as courage or genius, and I grant that strength of mind does not always accompany strength of body, when the means of connection between the two are otherwise faulty. But however well planned they may be, they will always work feebly if for motive power they depend upon an exhausted, impoverished supply of blood, deprived of the substance which gives strength and elasticity to all the springs of the machinery. There is generally more vigour of mind to be found among men whose early years have been preserved from precocious vice, than among those whose evil living has begun at the earliest opportunity; and this is no doubt the reason why nations whose morals are pure are generally superior in sense and courage to those whose morals are bad. The latter shine only through I know not what small and trifling qualities, which they call wit, sagacity, cunning; but those great and noble features of goodness and reason, by which a man is distinguished and honoured through good deeds, virtues, really useful efforts, are scarcely to be found except among the nations whose morals are pure.