them? It will be in vain to deny the prevalence of this most pernicious folly, so long as we find a very large majority of the youth of our country acting under the opinion of its being highly disgraceful to do _that_ before the faculty of a college, or the head of a school, which their fathers deem it perfectly right to do every time _they themselves_ are called as witnesses before the juries and courts of their country. I have said more on this parental fault than otherwise I should have done, because I am thoroughly and deeply convinced that there never can long exist any flourishing schools, academies, or colleges, in any portion of our country, where so radically mischievous an error prevails. _Our youth must be taught_, and by their parents too, that _they_ have no more right to exemption from the restraints of scholastic law, than _men_ have from the inhibitions of the laws of their country—that all legitimate human institutions have a clear, indisputable, and necessary power to make regulations for their own preservation; that this power _must_ be obeyed, or it is utterly useless; and that if obedience be proper, honorable, and indispensable in their fathers, it cannot possibly be improper, unessential, or dishonorable in their children. Let our sons be taught _this lesson_ at home, and the absolute necessity of always acting up to it every where, and we may then confidently hope, _but not until then_, that all our seminaries of instruction will flourish in a far greater degree than we ever yet have witnessed. “It is a consummation most devoutly to be wished,” and _one_, towards the accomplishment of which, neither time, money, nor intellectual effort should be spared. Another fault committed by many more parents than are aware of it is, that either from very culpable neglect in studying their children's characters, or from most fatuitous partiality, they often send them to school, in full confidence that they will prove most exemplary patterns of good principles and good conduct, when, in fact, they are signally deficient in both. The consequence is, that should any teacher be daring enough to communicate the painful intelligence, it is either entirely discredited, or it comes on the unfortunate, self-deluded parent with the suddenness and shock of a clap of thunder. If the account is believed, the punishment justly due to the real author of the mischief, the guilty father or mother, is not unfrequently inflicted on the child; or, should it be deemed false, young master or miss (as the case may be) is immediately taken away, and turned loose at home to unrestrained indulgence, or sent to some instructer who has more of the cunning of worldly wisdom than to make any such startling and incredible communications.