There is still another fault of a similar character, which defeats, while it lasts, nearly every effort to instruct—especially in moral duty—let the teachers themselves possess what qualifications they may. This is, the very prevalent notion (if we can infer what they believe from what they do,) that if rules of moral conduct for pupils do not actually exist, of a nature far less rigorous than such as are to govern grown persons—yet that these last moral regulations were never designed for youth, who therefore cannot suffer any of the consequences of their violation. Hence they very often act as if they thought no fault too great, nor scarcely any vice too dangerous for them to commit with impunity while at school. They are, apparently, at least altogether unconscious, that although they may escape legal punishment, they frequently acquire characters for worthlessness, which they never can shake off in after life. Lying and pilfering, for example, are among the vices which, if known to be committed in youth, will indelibly blacken the reputation of the perpetrators to the latest hour of their existence. Yet both boys and girls often violate, not only their obligations “to speak truth at all times,” but also that of holding sacred all the rights of property. This too is done without the slightest apparent conviction, that they are identically the same vices which bring adults either to penitentiaries or the gallows, or degrade them forever in the estimation of all the honest, virtuous part of mankind. The robbing of orchards, gardens, melon-grounds, and even poultry yards, are often considered by boys as mere frolicks and peccadillos, serving only to form good stories in after life, for the amusement of their friends, to be laughed at and enjoyed—most strange to say, even by the parents and near connections of the offending parties. I have sometimes heard, and from the parties themselves too, of actions nearly, if not quite as bad, achieved by girls at school, which have furnished high entertainment for years, to a certain class of mothers and grave matrons, whose only comment, even in the presence of their daughters, probably would be—“ah! to be sure, they were sad, wild girls, and deserved to be well whipt for their pranks; but we should remember that _we_ were so too, at _their_ age, yet have we gone on pretty well since.” And so have many children _also gone on pretty well_, after being almost miraculously rescued from deep waters and blazing fires into which they had fallen. But would not any parents be thought stark mad who would venture, for such a reason, to throw their offspring into rivers and furnaces? The truth is, that neither folly, vice, nor crime can be altered, either in their nature or consequences, simply by the age of the perpetrators, provided only that they be old enough to know thoroughly the difference between right and wrong. Infection, contagion, and death by