Here comes in also his first advice as to the disciplining of a child. He appears to have held strong views as to the necessity of firmness, but not to have been in favour of the great severity which often obtained in those days. His observations are too valuable even now to be passed over. What could be better than the following? “Here cometh in the cockling of the parents to give the child the sway of his owne desires to have whatsoever it pointeth to, and so it maketh the parents and all the house slaves, and there is no end of noyse, of crying, and wraling; or els there is such severitie as the heart of the child is utterly broken.” Or again, “When parents do either too much cockle their children, or by home example do draw them to worser things, or els neglect the due discipline and good order, what I pray you can come to passe? but as we see in trees which beeing neglected at the first are crooked and unfruitful; contrarily, they which by the hand and art of the husbandman are proined, stayed up, and watered, are made upright, faire, and fruitfull.” [Sidenote: Parents to Superintend their Children’s Upbringing.] It will be observed that this writer implies in all the advice he gives that the parent is the proper person to bring up a child, not a servant at home or a teacher at a distance. “Parents,” he says, “should watch and attend upon their children for the avoiding of evil occasions and to see all duties rightly performed.” How far have we got nowadays from this ideal! How greatly modern habits of life have interfered with any such possibility! What the ancient moralist quoted above would have said to the upbringing of most children at the present day it is difficult to imagine. He sums up his own point of view very pithily in the words, “The egges are badly hatched when the bird is away; and the children are unluckily nurtured whose parents are made careles, being absent through pleasure.” [Sidenote: Old-fashioned Severity Leads to Dissimulation.]