pronounced to be quite a venial peccadillo, amply compensated by the intellectual smartness which it evinces. The seeds of vanity, self-conceit, and censoriousness are thus sown in the youthful mind as soon as they can take root, and by the very hands too whose sacred duty it is to protect it from all harm. Closely allied to the foregoing fault is the ever restless haste of very many parents to make men and women of their children sooner than nature intended. It may well be called the hot-bed system, and like that from which it takes its name, produces plants out of season, incapable of withstanding necessary exposure to the open atmosphere and the vicissitudes of climate. The consequence is, that the period of scholastic education is most injuriously shortened, particularly for girls. The boys are pushed forward into professions, and turned loose to act for themselves, with a mere smattering of literature and science—often before any power for serious reflection has been acquired, or indeed could well be formed in such juvenile, inexperienced minds, in regard to the great, complicated duties of life, the objects most worthy of pursuit, and the all-important {438} principles which should ever govern them in fulfilling the first, as well as in attaining the last. False estimates of human life, aggravated by innumerable miscarriages in their ill-digested plans, necessarily follow; and the poor youths are most unjustly condemned for failure in pursuits wherein they have been either forced or suffered from most foolish and mischievous indulgence to engage, long before they had maturity either of body or mind sufficient to render success even probable. They are stimulated—nay, often driven to sea, on the vast, tempestuous ocean of life, without compass or rudder to their little barks, and then are most grievously abused for getting wrecked, when the pilots who should have steered their fragile vessels had most unpardonably abandoned their trust. But should the frequent occurrence of such a calamity create any surprise, when we find so many, even of those who know better, so far yielding to the popular error, as to manage their sons in this way? It is quite enough to overcome all their wisest resolves, to be told by the majority of their acquaintance, that “it is a shame to keep their boys so long in leading-strings—they should be doing something for themselves.” This sapient admonition usually settles every doubt, and the unfortunate youths, in all the perilous immaturity of boyhood, are forthwith converted into men, left to think and act for themselves. But their mental outfits for so arduous a business being entirely inadequate, their outfits of property are not unfrequently squandered, and irretrievably lost, several years prior to the time when they could reasonably be expected to understand their only true and legitimate uses. Hence we have many examples of young men who have actually run