It must be allowed, that of all the vexations incidental to education, none can be compared with that which is experienced in the rearing of a _stupid_ child. Those who have strong lively natural capacities are, indeed, liable to terrible irregularities--passion and presumption master them entirely; but, on the other hand, they have great resources, and may be easily checked, however turbulent. Education is, in them, a concealed but vegetating germe, which sometimes bears fruit when experience comes to the aid of reason, and when the passions begin to cool. At least we know how to make them attentive, and awaken their curiosity: they have something in them which makes them take an interest in their lessons, and stimulates their sense of honour--whereas one has no sort of pleasure or gratification in the instruction of _stupid_ children. All their thoughts are distracted: they are never where they ought to be: the most poignant correction has no effect on them: they hear every thing, and feel nothing. This indolence and stupidity makes a child negligent and disgusted with every thing she does. She is in such a case, that the _best mode_ of education runs a risk of miscarrying, if we do not guard against the evil, from earliest infancy. Many people who have little depth of penetration, conclude, from this bad success, that nature does _every thing_ in the formation of men of merit, and education _nothing_--instead of remarking that there are dispositions, like barren soils, on which cultivation produces little. It is yet more lamentable when these knotty systems of education have been thwarted or neglected, or badly regulated at the beginning.