in prayer, reverence for parents, consideration of brothers for sisters, unselfishness, manners, etc., her views on all these things are like the laws of the Medes and Persians “which do not alter “—­and they are also holy and wholesome.  The Irish nurse rules by the heart, and by sympathy, by a power of self-devotion that can only be found where the love of God is the deepest love of the heart; she has no views, but—­she knows.  She does not need to observe—­she sees’ she has instincts, she never lays down a law, but she wins by tact and affection, lifting up the mind to God and subduing the will to obedience, while appearing to do nothing but love and wait.  The stamp that she leaves on the earliest years of training is never entirely effaced; it remains as some instinct of faith, a habit of resignation to the will of God, and habitual recourse to prayer.  Both these types of educators rule by their gift from God, and it is hard to believe that the most finished training in the art of nursery management can produce anything like them, for they govern by those things that lectures and handbooks cannot teach—­faith, love, and common sense.

Those who take up the training of the next stage have usually to learn by their own experience, and study what is given to very few as a natural endowment—­the art of so managing the wills of children that without provoking resistance, yet without yielding to every fancy, they may be led by degrees to self-control and to become a law to themselves.  It must be recognized from the beginning that the work is slow; if it is forced on too fast either a breaking point comes and the child, too much teased into perfection, turns in reaction and becomes self-willed and rebellious; or if, unhappily, the forcing process succeeds, a little paragon is produced like Wordsworth’s “model child":—­

“Full early trained to worship seemliness,
This model of a child is never known
To mix in quarrels; that were far beneath
Its dignity; with gifts he bubbles o’er
As generous as a fountain; selfishness
May not come near him, nor the little throng
Of flitting pleasures tempt him from his path;
The wandering beggars propagate his name. 
Dumb creatures find him tender as a nun,
And natural or supernatural fear,
Unless it leap upon him in a dream,
Touches him not.  To enhance the wonder, see
How arch his notices, how nice his sense
Of the ridiculous; not blind is he
To the broad follies of the licensed world,
Yet innocent himself withal, though shrewd,
And can read lectures upon innocence;
A miracle of scientific lore,
Ships he can guide across the pathless sea,
And tell you all their cunning; he can read
The inside of the earth, and spell the stars;
He knows the policies of foreign lands;
Can string you names of districts, cities, towns,
The whole world over, tight as beads of dew
Upon a gossamer thread; he sifts, he weighs;