Another sore evil of incalculable extent, in relation to this subject of education, is the frequent discordance between the precepts and the lessons which must necessarily be taught in all well-regulated schools, and the examples witnessed, the opinions heard, and the habits indulged in at home. This often places conscientious teachers in a most puzzling and painful dilemma, from which many shrink altogether, while others vainly endeavor to compromise the matter in such a manner, as completely to _nullify_ (if I may use a very current phrase) every effort to do good. The dilemma is, that in discharging the duty to the child, the parent, although indirectly, is unavoidably condemned, every time the teachers warn their pupils, as they continually ought to do, against any of the faults and vices most prevalent in society. Desperate, indeed, and almost hopeless, is the task of teaching, when this most deplorable, but very common case occurs. For what is the consequence of imparting virtuous principles and habits to the children, admitting the possibility of it, where none but vicious examples have been seen under the parental roof? Their eyes are inevitably opened to the wretched moral destitution of those to whom, under God, they owe their existence; and they are thus plunged into a state of perpetual suffering, if not actual misery—for the better the children become, the greater will be their distress and affliction at the condition of their parents. What fathers or mothers are there, having either hearts to feel or understandings to discern the awful responsibilities they live under in regard to their children, but must tremble at the bare thought of setting them bad examples, and thus becoming a source of double misery to their own offspring—misery _here_, even if they escape the contagion of these vicious parental practices and habits—and misery _hereafter_, should they be so deeply infected as to prove irreclaimable? Another highly pernicious fault, of which multitudes of teachers are guilty, is continually to act as if they took upon themselves no other responsibility than that of a mere formal attendance in their schools for the number of hours prescribed, to hear prescribed lessons repeated in a parrot-like manner. Any thought of being accountable for the influence exerted in forming the characters of so many fellow-beings, seems never to enter their minds, although this is beyond all calculation the most important part of the whole process of education.