“We perfectly agree with Rousseau, that the severest evil which children suffer is the bondage which they endure. We also agree with him, that the restraints of necessity are more easily borne than those which are imposed by the will of others. ‘It is in the nature of man,’ says he, ‘to endure patiently the absolute necessity of his circumstances.’ ‘It is all gone,’ is an answer against which a child never objects; at least, if he believes it to be true.’[55] Experience must establish the truth of this position in every mind; we all know that a child leaves off crying for the moon years before he submits without a struggle to the commands of his parents. The cause of this difference arises, we think, partly from the uniform regularity with which the natural restraints operate, and partly because the child observes that all around him are subjected to the same laws. If the child had ever had the moon, or if it had ever seen the moon in the possession of another person, it would not be so patient under the privation. Sagacious parents are aware of this, and take every means of showing their children that their determinations are as unalterable as those of nature; and certainly much may be done by prudently avoiding hasty determinations with respect to children, and by inflexibly persisting in all determinations when made.” In governing his school, and in later years in governing all who were placed under his authority, this was the rule that he always aimed at carrying out. By nature, indeed, he was far too hasty in coming to a determination. Nay, he was hot-tempered, and even passionate. No sooner had he discovered his fault than he set about to find for it a cure. One of the methods that he took was certainly very strange. “He gave public notice to the boys that if any one saw him in a passion he might come up and tell him so; receiving a small reward for so doing. This reward was obtained more than once.” He was so rigidly just that no boy who had played the part of Gil Blas would have found in him an Archbishop of Granada. By his Code of Laws he still further put himself under restraint. Every breach of school law, every offence against a master, had its exact penalty fixed. But when once the penalty had been incurred, it was enforced to the full. His determinations, indeed, were as unalterable as those of nature. His strong will and his undaunted courage could not but have won his pupils’ respect. One of them has told me how he remembers a day at Hill Top, when a big fellow, who could easily have knocked his master down, set him at defiance before all the boys. “Rowland Hill ran up to him, seized him by the collar, and said, ‘If you don’t do it this moment, I will knock you down.’ The fellow was cowed in a moment, and, though he was by far the stronger of the two, at once obeyed.” This happened, I should add, in the days before the Constitution