to be made by those who most frequently commit acts that should produce it. Much the most common course among the violators of any moral law or obligation whatever, whether they are children or adults, is to seek refuge from the consciousness of one fault, in the commission of some other—which other, generally, is, to shift the blame, if possible, from themselves. That humble, contrite, self-abasing spirit which caused the prodigal son to exclaim—“Father, I have sinned against heaven and thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son,” is hardly to be expected, in any great degree, among children at school: yet they _should_ possess it, before their parents ought to rely on their competency to judge and decide in their own cases, whether _they_ or _their teachers_ are in the wrong—cases too, wherein it is perfectly obvious, that if the teachers are the offending party, they must have become so in opposition to their best interests. From the foregoing considerations, it is manifest, that among such children at school as are justly reproved or punished for misconduct, unjust complaints of partiality in the teachers will frequently arise; and that these will often be too readily credited, without any investigation, or even the slightest hint to the persons thus secretly accused, of what has been alleged against them. In all such cases a withdrawal of the pupils almost certainly follows, succeeded by abuse of the schools, which often becomes the more bitter and inveterate, from the parents themselves having an unacknowledged conviction, that _they are the injurers_, instead of the _injured party_. With all such persons the self-applied cure for the mortification arising from incurable dullness, or depravity in their children, is to slander their teachers wherever it can safely be done. Another proper and necessary difference in the scholastic treatment of children proceeds from difference of age. But most unluckily, it sometimes happens, that very young little masters and misses expect to be treated like grown up young gentlemen and ladies; and should such very rational expectations be disappointed, as they most assuredly should be, these premature aspirants to the privileges and immunities of manhood and womanhood, take most grievous and unappeasable offence at it. Heavy, but vague complaints of partial treatment follow of course; parental tenderness is naturally excited; parental credulity lends too easy credence to the tale of juvenile woe; and a change of school is the frequent consequence, without the really innocent teachers even suspecting that any such cause could possibly have produced it.