reflexion, that parents are guilty of a gross breach of duty, if they do not use their utmost endeavours to facilitate the introduction of their children to the active work of life, and to fit them for the circumstances in which they are likely to be placed.  To bring up a son or daughter in idleness or ignorance ought to be as great a reproach to a parent as it is to a child to dishonour its father or mother.  And yet, in the upper and middle classes at all events, there are many parents who, without incurring much reprobation from their friends, prefer to treat their children like playthings or pet animals rather than to take the pains to train them with a view to their future trials and duties.  It ought to be thoroughly realised, and, as the moral consciousness becomes better adapted to the existing circumstances of society, it is to be trusted that it will be realised, that parents have no moral right to do what they choose with their children, but that they are under a strict obligation both to society and to their children themselves so to mould their dispositions and develope their faculties and inform their minds and train their bodies as to render them good and useful citizens, and honest and skilful men.  It is to be hoped that, some day, people will regard with as much surprise the notion that parents have a right to neglect the education of their children as we now regard with wonder, when we first hear of it; the maxim of archaic law, that a parent had a right to put his child to death.

Much of the trouble, vexation, and misery of which men are the cause to themselves is due to cowardice, or the false shame which results from attaching undue importance to custom, fashion, or the opinion of others, even when that opinion is not confirmed by their own reflexion.  Shame is an invaluable protection to men, as a restraining feeling.  But the objects to which it properly attaches are wrong-doing, unkindness, discourtesy, to others, and, as regards ourselves, ignorance, imprudence, intemperance, impurity, and avoidable defects or misfortunes.  While it confines itself to objects such as these, it is one of the sternest and, at the same time, most effective guardians of virtue and self-respect.  But, as soon as a man begins to care about what others will say of circumstances not under his own control, such as his race, his origin, his appearance, his physical defects, or his lack of wealth or natural talents, he may be laying up for himself a store of incalculable misery, and is certainly enfeebling his character and impairing his chances of future usefulness.  It is under the influence of this motive, for instance, that many a man lives above his income, not for the purpose of gratifying any real wants either of himself or his family, but for the sake of ‘keeping up appearances,’ though he is exposing his creditors to considerable losses, his family to many probable disadvantages, and himself to almost certain disgrace in the future.  It is under the influence of this motive, too, that many men, in the upper and middle classes, rather than marry on a modest income, and drop out of the society of their fashionable acquaintance, form irregular sexual connexions, which are a source of injury to themselves and ruin to their victims.