The education of parents begins from the day their first child is born. A young man and woman may be selfish and egotistical enough until the "baby" comes as a teacher of practical Christianity into their home. Now they have to think of somebody beside themselves, to give up not a few of their comforts and individual "ways," for the one important thing in the house is King "Baby." If they really love their children, parents will become truthful in act as well as in word, knowing that truthful habits must be learned in childhood or not at all. They will be so just that "You'r' not fair" will never be rightly charged against them. And, as regards sympathy, they will try to be the friends and companions in sorrow and in joy as well as the parents of their children. Nor is it only the moral nature that is developed in the school of parenthood. Even to attempt to answer the wise questions of children is a task difficult enough to afford healthy exercise to the greatest minds. When a child begins to cross-examine its parents as to why the fire burns, how his carte-de-visite was taken, how many stars there are, why people suffer, why God does not kill the devil--grown-up ignorance or want of sympathy too often laughs at him, says that children should not ask tiresome questions, and not only checks the inquiring spirit within him, but misses the intellectual improvement that would have come from endeavouring to answer his questions. "Little people should be seen and not heard" is a stupid saying, which makes young observers shy of imparting to their elders the things that arrest their attention. Children would gladly learn and gladly teach, but if they are frequently snubbed they will do neither. Men such as Professor Robinson of Edinburgh, the first editor of the "Encyclopædia Britannica," have not been above receiving intellectual improvement and pleasure from a little child. "I am delighted," he wrote in reference to his grandchild, "with observing the growth of its little soul, and particularly with its numberless instincts, which formerly passed unheeded. I thank the French theorists for more forcibly directing my attention to the finger of God, which I discern in every awkward movement and every wayward whim. They are all guardians of his life and growth and power. I regret indeed that I have not time to make infancy and the development of its powers my sole study." Some parents seem to imagine that they sufficiently perform their duty when they give their children a good education. They forget that there is the education of the fireside as well as of the school. At schools and academies there is no cultivation of the affections, but often very much of the reverse. Hence the value to the young of kindly home influences that touch the heart and understanding. Among the poems of George Macdonald are the following pretty and playful lines called simply "The Baby"--