During this period, when applause is perpetually bestowed, and contradiction seldom obtruded, children indulge chimerical hopes, which, alas! are the source of endless disappointments throughout life. I have seen children who always fancied you were talking about them, whenever any thing was privately said--and this, forsooth, because it has _sometimes_ actually been the case: they have also imagined themselves to be most extraordinary and incomparable beings. Take care, therefore, that in your attentions to children, they are unconscious of any particular solicitude on your part: shew them that it is from pure regard, and the helplessness of their condition to relieve their own wants, that you interest yourself in their behalf--and not from admiration of their talents. Be content to form their minds, by degrees, according to each emergency that may arise: and if it were in your power to advance their knowledge much beyond their years, even without straining their intellect, by no means put it in practice; recollect that the danger of _vanity_ and _arrogance_ is always greater than the fruit of those premature educations which make so much noise in the world. We must be satisfied to follow and assist nature. Children know little, and should not be stimulated to talk: but the consequence of this ignorance is, they are continually asking questions. We should, therefore, answer them precisely, and add sometimes little comparisons, which may throw light on the information we give them. If they judge of some things without sufficient knowledge, they should be checked by a new question, which might make them sensible of their error without rudely confounding them; at the same time take care to impress on their minds, not by vague praises, but by some effectual mark of esteem, that they afford much more satisfaction when they _doubt_, and _ask for information_, on points they do not know, than when they happen to decide rightly. This is the sure method to implant in them a true sense of modesty and politeness; and to excite a contempt for those idle controversies in which ignorant young folks are too apt to indulge.