I am so convinced that if one has a happy childhood one’s whole life is sweetened by it, no matter whatever happens afterwards, that I cannot impress too much upon my readers the absolute necessity of securing this, at any rate, for their boys and girls. This, however, is not to be had by dressing them finely, and dragging them about from drawing-room to drawing-room, from late party to late party, or by pampering them and considering them until one cannot call the house one’s own, neither does it consist in leaving them to themselves altogether. Apparently, children should be left greatly to themselves, but much in the same manner that--I speak in all sincerity--a higher Power manages us and our affairs. Let the free-will be there, but let the guiding hand, unseen though it should be, never be lacking, and we shall find the children happy and good, because they are surrounded with clean good air, and are brought up in an atmosphere absolutely free from taint of any kind. The instant the schoolroom is started, that instant both mothers and fathers should become in a measure omniscient and omnipresent; and, above all, they should remember the clear sight and hearing of the children, and should, furthermore, recollect that what they say and do means a great deal more now than it ever did. Let them see their own lives are full of interest, and are of good aim and intent, and they will find example is greater than precept, and that they have succeeded by unconscious example where everything else would have failed. Of course, it is absolutely necessary that all girls should learn to sew, to cook, and to play the piano; and all boys should have some way of employing their fingers, and no household should be complete without its hospital box; into this the girls can collect all the frocks and petticoats they can make, while the boys can make scrapbooks, paint pictures with water-colours over prints from ‘Punch’ or the ‘Illustrated London News,’ or cut out ships or wooden dolls; and while they are doing this they could be read to from Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, or Miss Yonge--a strange mixture, may be, but to those four writers the world can never be grateful enough, try hard as it may, while the schoolroom contingent brought up on these splendid people’s brains will be worth a hundred of the present-day children, fostered on such idle rubbish as Rider Haggard produces, and others that shall be nameless. And here let me beg and pray the parents to make a stand for Dickens and Thackeray, even if they will not for the other two authors of whom I have spoken. Dickens has become neglected, I know, and Oxford undergraduates, taking to Thackeray late, fall asleep over ‘Esmond’ and ‘The Virginians’; but let these books be in the schoolroom, and boys and girls take to them naturally, like ducks take to water, and are at once made happier by them than they can be by anything else.