Ir can never be too often repeated, that one of the great objects of education is the forming of habits. I may be suspected of having recurred too often, though hitherto only incidentally, to this topic. It is, however, a topic of such importance, that it will be useful to consider it somewhat more in detail, as the early forming of right habits on sound principles seems to be one of the grand secrets of virtue and happiness.

The forming of any one good habit seems to be effected rather by avoiding the opposite bad habit, and resisting every temptation to the opposite vice, than by the mere occasional practice of the virtue required. Humility, for instance, is less an act than a disposition of mind. It is not so much a single performance of some detached humble deed, as an incessant watchfulness against every propensity to pride. Sobriety is not a prominent ostensible thing; it evidently consists in a series of negations, and not of actions. It is a conscientious habit of resisting every incentive to intemperance. Meekness is best attained and exemplified by guarding against every tendency to

anger, impatience, and resentment. A habit of attention and application is formed by early and constant vigilance against a trifling spirit and a wandering mind. - A habit of industry, by watching against the blandishments of pleasure, the waste of small portions of time, and the encroachment of small indulgences.

Now, to stimulate us to an earnest desire of working any or all of these habits into the minds of children, it will be of importance to consider what a variety of uses each of them involves.

To take, for example, the case of moderation and temperance. It would seem, to a superficial observer, of no very great importance to acquire a habit of self-denial in respect either to the elegancies of decoration, or to the delicacies of the table, or to the common routine of pleasure; that there can be no occasion for an indifference to luxuries harmless in themselves, and no need of daily moderation in those persons who are possessed of affluence, and to whom, therefore, as the expense is no object, so the forbearance is thought of no importance. Those acts of self-denial, I admit, when contemplated by themselves, appear to be of no great value, yet they assume high importance, if you consider what it is to have, as it were, dried up the spring of only one importunate passion; if you reflect, after any one such conquest is obtained, how easily, comparatively speaking, it is followed up by others.

How much future virtue and self-government, in more important things, may a mother, therefore, be

securing to a child, even should she always remain in as high a situation as she is in when the first foundations of this quality are laying; but should any reverse of fortune take place in the daughter, how much integrity and independence of mind also may be prepared for her, by the early excision of superfluous desires. She, who has been trained to subdue these propensities, will, in all probability, be preserved from running into worthless company merely for the sake of the splendour which may be attached to it. She will be rescued from the temptation to do wrong things, for the sake of enjoyments from which she cannot abstain. She is delivered from the danger of flattering those whom she despises; because her moderate mind and wellordered desires do not solicit indulgences, which could only be procured by mean compliances. For she will have been habituated to consider the character as the leading circumstance of attachment, and the splendour as an accident, which may or may not belong to it; but which, when it does, as it is not a ground of merit in the possessor, so it is not to be the ground of her attachment. The habit of self-control, in small as well as in great things, involves in the aggregate less loss of pleasure than will be experienced by disappointments in the mind habitually yielding itself to the love of present indulgences, whenever those indulgences should be abridged or withdrawn.

She who has been accustomed to have an early habit of restraint exercised over all her appetites and tempers, she who has been used to set bounds

to her desires as a general principle, will have learned to withstand a passion for dress and personal ornaments; and the woman who has conquered this propensity has surmounted one of the most domineering temptations which assail the sex; while this seemingly little circumstance, if neglected and the opposite habit formed, may be the first step to every successive error, and every consequent distress. Those women who are ruined by seduction in the lower classes, and those who are made miserable by ambitious marriages in the higher, will be more frequently found to owe their misery to an ungoverned passion for dress and show, than to motives more apparently bad. An habitual moderation in this article growing out of a pure self-denying principle, and not arising from the affectation of a singularity, which may have more pride in it than others feel in the indulgence of any of the things which this singularity renounces, includes many valuable advantages. Modesty, simplicity, humility, economy, prudence, liberality, charity, are almost inseparably, and not very remotely, connected with an habitual victory over personal vanity and a turn to personal expense. The inferior and less striking virtues are the smaller pearls, which serve to string and connect the great ones.

An early and unremitting zeal in forming the mind to a habit of attention, not only produces the outward expression of good breeding, as one of its incidental advantages; but involves, or rather creates, better qualities than itself; while vacancy

and inattention not only produce vulgar manners, but are usually the indication, if not of an ordinary yet of a neglected understanding. To the habitually inattentive, books offer little benefit; company affords little improvement; while a self-imposed attention sharpens observation, and creates a spirit of inspection and enquiry which often lifts a common understanding to a degree of eminence in knowledge, sagacity, and usefulness, which indolent or negligent genius does not always reach. A habit of attention exercises intellect, quickens discernment, multiplies ideas, enlarges the power of combining images and comparing characters, and gives a faculty of picking up improvement from circumstances the least promising; and of gaining instruction from those slight but frequently recurring occasions, which the absent and the negligent turn to no account. Scarcely any thing or person is so unproductive as not to yield some fruit to the attentive and sedulous collector of ideas. But this is far from being the highest praise of such a person; she who early imposes on herself a habit of strict attention to whatever she is engaged in begins to wage early war with wandering thoughts, useless reveries, and that disqualifying train of busy but unprofitable imaginations, by which the idle are occupied, and the absent are absorbed. She who keeps her intellectual powers in action studies with advantage herself, her books, and the world. Whereas they, in whose undisciplined minds vagrant thoughts have been suffered to range without restriction on ordinary occasions, will find they