It was Juvenal who said, "The man's character is made at seven: what he is then he will always be." This seems a sweeping assertion; but Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Lycurgus, Bacon, Locke, and Lord Brougham, all emphasize the same idea. Leading educators of a modern day are all united upon this point. The pliable period of early childhood is the time most favorable to the eradication of vicious tendencies, and to the development of the latent possibilities for good. The foundations for national prosperity and perpetuity are to be laid deep down in our infant schools. And the infant school, to be most successful, must be organized and carried forward on the kindergarten plan. The kindergarten has rightfully been termed the "paradise of childhood." It is the gate through which many a little outcast has re-entered Eden. Froebel, that great and beloved apostle of childhood, founded a system that is destined to revolutionize all former methods of developing little children. His battle-cry was, "Come! let us live with our children!" The simple, salient fact is, we do not get hold of the little children of vice and of crime _soon enough_. An unfortunate childhood is the sure prophecy of an unfortunate life. "Implant lessons of virtue and well-doing in earliest childhood," says Plato. "Give me the child," says Lord Bacon, "and the State shall have the man." "Let the very playthings of your children have a bearing upon the life and work of the coming man," says Aristotle. "It is early training that makes the master," says the great German poet. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and, when he is old, he will not depart from it," says the Revealed Word. Let us take heed to these entreaties, and work with the children. Work with little children will always pay handsome dividends to the family, to the community, to the State, and to the world. It is Ruskin who says, "The true history of a nation is not of its wars, but of its households;" and he holds it to be the duty of a State to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed and educated, till it attain years of discretion. But he admits that, in order to accomplish this, the government must have an authority over the welfare of children of which we do not now so much as dream. Whether such a view be practical or not, one thing is certain: nothing but virtue and intelligence can save a republic from ending in despotism, corruption, and anarchy. There must be genuine character.