"Whence is it that we so frequently see this pernicious physical treatment, and its natural fruits? Why do we see so many over-fed, gormandizing, ill-humored, selfish and self-willed children? The combined power of three great causes are at work: _maternal love_, _vanity_ and _ignorance_. We may venture to say, every mother in her senses loves her child more than she loves herself. How can she then refuse to give him any thing! Food is the most obvious comfort, the greatest pleasure he enjoys, and she gives it freely. She wishes her child to _thrive_, to become strong, vigorous and fleshy. And now _vanity_ comes in play. Every mother is vain of her child, and would fain have it the finest, and for this purpose also it is excessively fed. Yet this does not happen without the third cause,--_ignorance_. Ignorance does not perceive that the thriving of the child depends upon the quantity which it digests, rather than upon the quantity it swallows, and overlooks the great medium, which it does not understand, the organs of nourishment, whose office it is to prepare _nourishment_ for the body from the food which enters the stomach. Only so much food as the child really digests does it any good; what remains undigested is a source of evil. "As these bad habits began with blind and injudicious affection, so they end with the same. How can one who loves a child so much, give it pain! When the necessary consequences of this treatment appear, and the child becomes ill-humored, selfish and self-willed, and beginning very early, to worry its mother; this blind and weak love, incapable of resistance, pleads, '_The poor child cannot understand yet._ The understanding is not developed the first year. Let it grow older, and then I will educate it.' In the meantime, before the understanding is developed, the child is _miseducated_ and _spoiled_. The first use it makes of the understanding, is in tormenting the mother; and it soon becomes a little tyrant. There are too many mothers of this sort, who are slaves to their children. They reap only what they have sown." * * * * * EFFECTS OF MATERNAL INDULGENCE. We have expressed more than once the pleasure we felt on finding the subject of education occupy so much more attention of late in other periodicals, &c., and have given several extracts. We add another striking article from the Albany Journal and Telegraph.