Now it is not only idle, but cruel, to say that the place and provision for such Christian instruction and formation is under the roof of the parents' home; that the best school is the family. This is indeed true of the early formation by affection, influence, example, by which fathers and mothers fashion the first outlines of character, and mature them while the education of their children is advancing. None have reminded parents of this more faithfully than the Pastors of the Church. But to say that fathers and mothers are to educate their children, and that their home is to be the school of Christian instruction, catechetical teaching, formation of conscience, preparation for sacraments, and the like, is either the shallow talk of men who know nothing of Christian education, or care nothing for it, or a heartless mockery of our poor. The rich, the refined, the educated, whose time is their own, do not educate their own children. They systematically send them to schools and colleges, or pay for tutors or governesses under their own roof. They wisely shrink from a work for which, if they have the time, they seldom have the acquirements or the gift, or the method of the perseverance or the patience. And if this be, as it is, universally true of those who are the most competent, and the most provided with all the means and opportunities for the work, now is it not hardness of heart, or want of common sense, to say that the children of the poor are to learn reading, and writing, and summing, indeed, at school, but that their Christian teaching and formation must be provided at home? The workingmen of these countries are at labor from twilight to twilight. Their wives have the burden of the whole family; the poor mother is alone both the head and the servant of the whole house. When is she to teach, and train, and shape, and fashion the characters, hearts, consciences, intellects of the children? Is it to be done in the midst of a day's work, or in the weariness after the day's work is done? And are they competent to do what the mother of the rich cannot do? Broken with cares, wearied by work, suffering from poverty, often fainting from sickness because worn out with all these burdens, how shall the father or mother of a family, huddled into a single room, do what the rich and the educated, in their spacious houses, and with abundant leisure, never dream of attempting? Moreover, as I have shown in a preceding chapter, it must be admitted that a mother not educated in religious and moral principles cannot inform the mind and heart of the young child; this fully disposes of the argument that domestic teaching alone will supply what is acknowledged to be wanting in the "Public Schools." It is to be hoped that we shall hear no more of this heartless talk.