Do not misunderstand me.  The supposed object in this case is a good one, just as the object in week-day schools is a good one,—­to communicate valuable knowledge and develop the powers of the mind.  The defect in policy, in both cases, appears to be, that it totally defeats its own aim, renders the employments hateful that should be delightful, and sacrifices the whole powers, so far as its influence goes, without any equivalent.  All excess defeats itself.  As a grown man can work more in ten hours than in fifteen, taking a series of days together, so a child can make more substantial mental progress in five hours daily than in ten.  Your child’s mind is not an earthen jar, to be filled by pouring into it; it is a delicate plant, to be wisely and healthfully reared; and your wife might as well attempt to enrich her mignonette-bed by laying a Greek Lexicon upon it as try to cultivate that young nature by a topdressing of Encyclopaedias.  I use the word on high authority.  “Courage, my boy!” wrote Lord Chatham to his son, “only the Encyclopaedia to learn!”—­and the cruel diseases of a lifetime repaid Pitt for the forcing.  I do not object to the severest quality of study for boys or girls;—­while their brains work, let them work in earnest.  But I do object to this immoderate and terrific quantity.  Cut down every school, public and private, to five hours’ total work per diem for the oldest children, and four for the younger ones, and they will accomplish more in the end than you ever saw them do in six or seven.  Only give little enough at a time, and some freshness to do it with, and you may, if you like, send Angelina to any school, and put her through the whole programme of the last educational prospectus sent to me,—­“Philology, Pantology, Orthology, Aristology, and Linguistics.”

For what is the end to be desired?  Is it to exhibit a prodigy, or to rear a noble and symmetrical specimen of a human being?  Because Socrates taught that a boy who has learned to speak is not too small for the sciences,—­because Tiberius delivered his father’s funeral oration at the age of nine, and Marcus Aurelius put on the philosophic gown at twelve, and Cicero wrote a treatise on the art of speaking at thirteen,—­because Lipsius is said to have composed a work the day he was born, meaning, say the commentators, that he began a new life at the age of ten,—­because the learned Licetus, who was brought into the world so feeble as to be baked up to maturity in an oven, sent forth from that receptacle, like a loaf of bread, a treatise called “Gonopsychanthropologia,”—­is it, therefore, indispensably necessary, Dolorosus, that all your pale little offspring shall imitate these?  Spare these innocents! it is not their fault that they are your children,—­so do not visit it upon them so severely.  Turn, Angelina, ever dear, and out of a little childish recreation we will yet extract a great deal of maturer wisdom for you, if we can only bring this deluded parent to his senses.