But the more perfectly to familiarise to my pupil the understanding and digesting whatever he read, I would consider it as an indispensible part of my business, to talk over with him familiarly the subjects, that might necessarily demand our attention.  I would lead him by degrees to relate with clearness and precision the story of his author.  I would induce him to deliver his fair and genuine sentiments upon every action, and character that came before us.  I would frequently call upon him for a plain and simple reason for his opinion.  This should always be done privately, without ostentation, and without rivalship.  Thus, separate from the danger of fomenting those passions of envy and pride, that prepare at a distance for our youth so many mortifications, and at the expence of which too frequently this accomplishment is attained, I would train him to deliver his opinion upon every subject with freedom, perspicuity and fluency.  Without at any time dictating to him the sentiments it became him to entertain, I might, with a little honed artifice, mould his judgment into the form it was most desirable it should take, at the same time that I discovered his genius, and ascertained the original propensities of his mind.

It is unnecessary for me to say any thing respecting morals in the other sense of the word, I mean as they are connected with the conduct, the habits of which we should endeavour to cultivate in a pupil; as that subject has been already exhausted.  The vices of youth spring not from nature, who is equally the kind and blameless mother of all her children; they derive from the defects of education.  We have already endeavoured to shut up all the inlets of vice.  We have precluded servility and cowardice.  We have taken away the motives to concealment and falshood.  By the liberal indulgence we have prescribed, we have laid the foundation of manly spirit, and generous dignity.  A continual attention to history, accompanied with the cultivation of moral discernment, and animated with the examples of heroic virtue, could not fail to form the heart of the pupil, to all that is excellent.  At the same time, by assiduous care, the shoots of vanity and envy might be crushed in the bud.  Emulation is a dangerous and mistaken principle of constancy.  Instead of it I would wish to see the connection of pupils, consisting only of pleasure and generosity.  They should learn to love, but not to hate each other.  Benevolent actions should not directly be preached to them, they should strictly begin in the heart of the performer.  But when actually done, they should receive the most distinguished applause.

Let me be permitted in this place to observe, that the association of a small number of pupils seems the most perfect mode of education.  There is surely something unsuitable to the present state of mankind, in the wishing to educate our youth in perfect solitude.  Society calls forth a thousand powers both of mind and body, that must otherwise rust in inactivity.  And nothing is more clear from experience, than that there is a certain tendency to moral depravation in very large bodies of this kind, to which there has not yet been discovered a sufficient remedy.