St. Austin informs us that he had remarked, from his infancy, the vanity of his tutors. The best and most politic thing you can do, is, to know your own faults as completely as a child will know them, and to request some real friend to warn you of them. The generality of instructors pardon nothing in a pupil, but every thing in themselves: this excites an inquisitive and watchful spirit of malignity in such pupils--so that whenever they detect any fault in their tutor, they are delighted, and eventually despise him. Shun this error: do not be afraid to mention the faults which are visible in your conduct, and which may have escaped you before the child. If you find her capable of reasoning thereupon, observe that you set her an example of correcting her faults, by the detection of your own--by this means, your imperfections will be instrumental in edifying the child, and encouraging her to correct herself. You will also thereby avoid the contempt and disgust which your own faults may cause her to entertain against your person. Meanwhile, try every method to make those things agreeable which you exact from a child. Have you any thing crabbed or difficult to propose? convince her that this pain will be succeeded by pleasure: always shew the utility which results from your instructions; and make her sensible of the consequences as affecting mankind, and the different orders of society. Without this, all study will appear as a dry, barren, and thorny path. "Of what use," will children sometimes say to themselves, "is it to learn those things which do not relate to ordinary conversation, and which have no immediate connection with what we are _obliged_ to do?" We should therefore give them a reason for every thing we teach--"It is, we should observe, to enable you one day to do well in the world--it is to form your judgment, and to make you reason well on all the affairs of life." We should always represent to them some useful and solid _end_, which may support them in their application: and never pretend to keep them in subjection by a crabbed and absolute authority. In proportion as their reason advances, we should discuss with them on the necessity of education; not that we should implicitly follow their thoughts, but profit by them when they discover their real state of mind: so that we may try their discernment, and make them relish those things we are anxious for them to learn.