=The Elder Generation of Parents, Autocratic.=—This is how children were brought up some forty or fifty years ago, and even young parents of to-day have, in many cases, grown up under a _régime_, happy, loving and wise very likely, but, before all things, arbitrary. There were what the Scotch would call ‘ill-guided’ homes, where the children did what was right in their own eyes. These will always exist so long as there are weak and indolent parents, unconcerned about their responsibilities. But the exceptions went to prove the rule; and the rule and tradition, in most middle-class homes, was that of well-ordered and governed childhood. Every biography, that issues from the press, of the men and women who made their mark during the first half of the century, is a case in point. John Stuart Mill, Ruskin, the Lawrences, Tennyson, almost everyone who has made for himself a distinguished name, grew up under a martinet rule. Only the other day we heard of an instance, the recollection of which had survived for seventy years. A boy of twelve or thirteen had been out shooting rabbits. He came home in the early darkness of a bitterly cold winter evening. His father asked him by which gate he had entered the park. ‘By (such a) gate.’ ‘Did you shut it?’ ‘I don’t recollect.’ ‘Go and see’; and the boy went, though he was already tired out, and the gate in question was more than a mile from the house. Such an incident would scarcely happen to-day; the boy would protest, plead his own benumbed fatigue, and suggest that a man should be sent to shut the gate, if, as did not appear from the story, it was important that it should be shut at all. Yet this was a kind father, whom his children both loved and honoured; but arbitrary rule and unquestioning obedience were the habits of the household. Nor is this notion of domestic government quite obsolete yet. I heard the other day of a Scotch father who confined his daughter of eighteen to her room for a week on account of some, by no means serious, breach of discipline. The difference is, that where you find an arbitrary parent now, he is a little out of touch with the thought and culture of the day; while, a few decades ago, parents were arbitrary of set principle and in proportion as they were cultivated and intelligent. =Arbitrary Rule not always a Failure.=—It cannot be said that this arbitrary rule was entirely a failure. It turned out steadfast, capable, able, self-governed, gentle-mannered men and women. In our less hopeful moments, we wonder as we watch the children of our day whether they will prove as good stuff as their grandfathers and their fathers. But we need not fear. The evolution of educational thought is like the incoming of the tide. The wave comes and the wave goes and you hardly know whether you are watching ebb or flow; but let an hour elapse and then judge.