WE are in danger of being deficient in patience in bearing with the faults of our children. What! no better ! And this after I have laboured so long, and so painfully?' We forget that temptation, and constitutional sins, are often too much for ourselves, though our minds, we hope, are fortified by Christian principles, to the influence of which, our children are yet strangers. We, in fact, expect our little ones to exhibit a faultlessness which we are far from exhibiting. We have not patience to wait for God to do his work, in his own time and way. We want the labours and the watchings, and the mournings and the disappointments which attend maternal diligence, ended now ;-to have our children made, without delay, by the immediate agency of the Spirit of God, just what we desire. And so we ought. But this desire should not be so inordinate as to prevent our labouring without fainting, though God be pleased to withhold the blessing, till the season of labour is over. "The seed may spring up," as one says, "after the hand that planted it, and the eye that watered it, are at rest in the grave." MRS. HUNTINGTON.

SUSPECT the wisdom that is always blaming.

GUESSES AT TRUTH.

ON CRAMPING THE MINDS OF

CHILDREN.

ONLY those who are willing to learn are fit to act on children; they are more fit to instruct us in truth, than we are to instruct them in its outward forms. We do children an irreparable injury when we put their minds into moulds, casts, or forms, that are too little, and that cramp them like the feet of Chinese women. I depend more on the heart than on any book whatever; the mother must not copy, she must create. J.

ON GIVING THEM A FALSE DIRECTION.

THAT injudicious practice cannot be too much discouraged, of endeavouring to create talents, which do not exist in nature. That their daughters shall learn every thing, is so general a maternal maxim, that even unborn daughters, of whose expected abilities and conjectured faculties, it is presumed no very accurate judgment can previously be formed, are yet predestined to this universality of accomplishments.

This comprehensive maxim, thus almost universally brought into practice, at once weakens the general powers of the mind, by drawing off its strength, into too great a variety of directions, and cuts up time into too many portions, by splitting it into such an endless multiplicity of employments. I cannot help thinking that the restless pains we take, to cram up every little vacuity of life, by crowding one new thing upon another, rather creates a thirst for novelty than knowledge; and is but a well-disguised contrivance, to keep us in after-life more effectually from conversing with ourselves.

The care taken to prevent ennui, is but a creditable plan for promoting self-ignorance.

HANNAH MORE,

ON PLAYTHINGS.

OUR lives are not made up of great events, but of what we call trifling ones; and yet these trifling circumstances exert so great an influence on our characters, that they become in reality the most important.

Acting upon this principle, with regard to children, of how much consequence is not, the manner in which they are employed from their

earliest infancy, and what impressions they receive from the comparative nothings by which they are surrounded. Toys, for example, are given to them without any consideration. Such a thing cannot do any harm, and such another will amuse them. Alas! how many tempers have been ruined, how much selfishness nourished, how many evil propensities cherished by these innocent toys:—a love of novelty and variety, an insatiable thirst after some fresh pleasure, when the once-admired trifle has ceased to charm; a selfish desire of possession, an impatience and irritability, when the frail treasure is injured or destroyed; not to mention the inculcation of vanity and a love of dress, which the first plaything which we put into their hands is likely to inspire.

Dolls are so commonly thought to be the most rational amusement of children, that an attack on their character for utility, will be a most unpopular attempt; yet we have seen children themselves, so convinced that they did produce the effects above described, that they have requested to have the temptation removed. It is generally urged in opposition to this charge, that the tendency of nursing dolls, is to produce a love of children in the female mind. Were there no real objects, to which their affections might be directed, such a plea would be worth consideration. But are there no claimants amongst the children of

the poor, for the time and attention which is bestowed on the dressing and clothing of these images? Is the natural tendency of the human mind so strong to dwell on realities, and to go from fictitious, to real wants, that we must endeavour in infancy, to counteract this principle? "Men are but children of a larger growth;" and as we sow, so shall we reap.

The doll of the child is soon transformed into the novel of the girl; and the love of dress inspired by the former, is easily transferred to the individual, and personal feelings, of the latter.

We want to get from ideal to real; from outward to inward. Let then the occupations of the nursery, and the earliest impressions of infancy, be of this tendency, but let us never think, that any thing is immaterial, but continually reflect, 'this, that I do; this, which I say; this, which I give to my child; may make an eternal impression on its mind.'

Oh, mothers! tremble when you remember how little you have reflected, how little you have prayed, how little you have thought of that solemn charge, Take this child, and bring it up for Me.

M.