All these things--these, or the desire of them--he is expected to instil, not by set lessons from professors, which he may charge in the bill, but at school-intervals, as he walks the streets, or saunters through green fields (those natural instructors), with his pupils. The least part of what is expected from him, is to be done in school-hours. He must insinuate knowledge at the _mollia tempera fandi_. He must seize every occasion--the season of the year--the time of the day--a passing cloud--a rainbow--a wagon of hay--a regiment of soldiers going by--to inculcate something useful. He can receive no pleasure from a casual glimpse of Nature, but must catch at it as an object of instruction. He must interpret beauty into the picturesque. He cannot relish a beggar-man, or a gipsy, for thinking of the suitable improvement. Nothing comes to him, not spoiled by the sophisticating medium of moral uses. The Universe--that Great Book, as it has been called--is to him indeed, to all intents and purposes, a book, out of which he is doomed to read tedious homilies to distasting schoolboys.--Vacations themselves are none to him, he is only rather worse off than before; for commonly he has some intrusive upper-boy fastened upon him at such times; some cadet of a great family; some neglected lump of nobility, or gentry; that he must drag after him to the play, to the Panorama, to Mr. Bartley's Orrery, to the Panopticon, or into the country, to a friend's house, or to his favourite watering-place. Wherever he goes, this uneasy shadow attends him. A boy is at his board, and in his path, and in all his movements. He is boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy. Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people. The restraint is felt no less on the one side, than on the other.--Even a child, that "plaything for an hour," tires _always_. The noises of children, playing their own fancies--as I now hearken to them by fits, sporting on the green before my window, while I am engaged in these grave speculations at my neat suburban retreat at Shacklewell--by distance made more sweet--inexpressibly take from the labour of my task. It is like writing to music. They seem to modulate my periods. They ought at least to do so--for in the voice of that tender age there is a kind of poetry, far unlike the harsh prose-accents of man's conversation.--I should but spoil their sport, and diminish my own sympathy for them, by mingling in their pastime.