In place of a health-seeking instinct in America, we have a feeling which says, "I do not mind how hard a strain I have, provided I can hold out till I get through it." We are too much employed to think much of the discomfort of moderate fatigue and ill-health. Neither have we sufficient feeling respecting the permanence of the family to lead us to plan for a succession of descendants. An American says, "I had rather have forty-five or fifty years of active, satisfactory life, than sixty or seventy years of a comfortable, dawdling existence;" and, if we look at the case only as it affects himself, we cannot especially condemn the reasoning, but when we consider the constitution that this overstrained life bequeathes to the children, it assumes a different aspect. Being accustomed to see an attenuated, sickly physique in our leading and best-bred families, the eye is mis-educated; we establish a false ideal for women, and become comparatively indifferent to a fine physique in men. Men do not marry with a view of founding or continuing a family name, and their sentiment of gallantry inclines them to be fond of protecting a weak woman. Irregular habits are to some degree a necessity with us, and the greatest misfortune is, that we get used to the irregularity, and take little pains to avoid it. We have some rules in regard to diet and digestion, but they are for the most part practised only by those who have acquired ills, and are not very frequently applied in the rearing of children. The extremes of climate, and our uninviting roads, discourage open air exercise, and comparatively few have much time to go out. Our children do some more work at school than English children, and they have a good deal more of their time wasted in our system of text-books and "recitations," a word not known in England in the sense in which we use it, which requires that the able and conscientious pupils of the class shall look on while the weak and indolent ones are being drilled; which plan, judging from my own experience at school and college, I feel justified in saying, involves for them not only a waste of from one to three hours a day, but a fatigue fully or nearly equal to the same amount of time spent in study. We put great pressure upon class rank, the value of which is determined by the daily marks. This forces pupils into a very high degree of regularity in their work; at the same time it has most effect upon the most conscientious pupils; if it does not lead them to overdo in work, it is liable to make them overworry about the work, and girls suffer far more from this overworry than boys.