spared, is not afterwards to be wasted. There is a wide difference between the saving, that enables the pupil to advance farther, and that which slackens the active faculties and leaves the mind passive. The more instruction is rendered clear, the more active will it render the mind. For it is only when new ideas are clear, that their relations and applications to other subjects can be perceived. Tracing such relations and applications is the active exertion required. A number of facts and propositions, also, that have no connexion among themselves, or that the child cannot connect with anything he knew before, excite very little mental activity. Learning them is a laborious exertion of attention and memory, but it is the dullest of all labours; and if to this be superadded a sense of confusion, from want of clearly understanding the terms or the propositions themselves, the labour becomes intolerably oppressive. The attention of the child has a constant disposition to wander from the subject and relax effort. If this be suffered, the hours of confinement become long, and the duration of this dull and listless restraint is extremely injurious to the nerves, the faculties, and the temper. It is true that children must be compelled to commit some things to memory, which they cannot well understand. When this is necessary, care should be taken not to impose too much at a time, and to obtain short and vigorous efforts, rather than languid and tedious ones, for in the first case only, is the mind really active. As a general rule for rousing the young to exertion, it is better for the teacher to rely on a cheerful, encouraging, animated

manner in himself, and on the appearance of taking a personal interest in the lesson, rather than on the fallacious endeavour, to give habits of mental industry by the mere stimulus of amusement.

In the education of women, both errors are prevalent. Sometimes their knowledge is crude and shallow, because they are taught little but superficial results; at other times their health and spirits are irreparably hurt, by years of long, dull, and laborious restraint; and in neither case has the mind acquired any vigour. As soon as a certain portion of routine knowledge is instilled, it is assumed the education is complete. The young are then left to the influence of a few conventional rules for restraining their conduct, without any suspicion in their own minds, that they are doing their powers irreparable injury, by neglecting the habit of some useful and systematic employment. They begin life, without knowing the necessity of governing it by fixed principles, rather than by mere taste and humour. Till these erroneous opinions are shaken, it is in vain for persons who lament the progress of luxury, to make a stand at particular forms of expense; for what would be excessive in them, might not be so in another. It will ever be impossible to render the vague notion of excess, practical. But if we can bring our indulgences individually, to the test of their effect upon happiness, examined by the real nature and real interests of mankind, we shall seldom be much at a loss what to restrain. If on the one side some wrong judgments may be passed, owing to inaccurate observation, want of experience, or early prejudice,

on the other side, the subject is not one on which slight deviations from uniform wisdom will signify much. In every practical reform, it is very desirable that everybody if possible should act on the same principle, but the defective applications of it, arising from the errors of different judgments, will not prevent a great deal of good from being effected, and every convert from being useful. The first and most important step towards improvement is the power of acting according to our convictions; and if the process by which luxury destroys such power be understood, we shall not waste our time in declaiming against refinements that are useful, or against superfluities for which we are neither better nor worse. There may be prudential or economical reasons against eating off plate, wearing diamonds, or building palaces and making gardens; it may be a folly to value those things very highly, but the mere possession of them is not weakening the mind. That disastrous effect does not proceed from possessions, but from habits of life; and these may be quite as self-indulgent and more debasing in a slovenly barrack or a country club-room, than in a nobleman's palace.

SECTION VI.

The Habits of the English examined.

If the destruction of moral energy have been successfully traced to the predominance which luxury gives to passive impressions, there can be no real corrective, but such moral training as exercises the active principles of our nature. Any attempt to

VOL. II.

F

control the excesses of luxury, which is not directed to this purpose, will have little effect. Fortunately this conclusion is the most practical. For it could scarcely be expected that the old should renounce luxuries, which habit had rendered necessary to their health, or interwoven with their pride, their prejudices, or their weakness. But every one is desirous that his children should escape the errors of his own education, and if convinced that he has been the victim of bad habits, moral and physical, he will desire to give them a different training. Though he may have neither the power, nor perhaps even the wish to change his own habits, he may yet feel the importance of bringing up the young, with that power of acting according to the convictions of their reason, which his own education never gave him. A great point will be gained, when people feel that the example of decorum in their own household and conduct, (disgraceful vices being excluded from the present supposition,) gives feeble security for the characters of their children, while the principle of self-control is left uncultivated, and while surrounding circumstances relax moral vigour, by filling life with a succession of passive emotions.

Entirely disclaiming (as already said) the ascetic idea that any indulgence is reprehensible, without some better reason against it than that it is called a luxury by those who cannot afford it, I shall, in this section, apply the tests suggested in a preceding part, to some of our customary indulgences, to try whether they are really conducive to the enjoyment of life or not. No people will defend, perhaps few will

deliberately encourage modes of life, which they admit tend to destroy health, to stupefy the faculties, to pall the sense of enjoyment, to contract the sphere of ideas, to generate selfish, illiberal feelings, and turn pride into its worst and most unsocial direction.

Of all our habitual luxuries, the excesses of the table are perhaps most injurious. Their physical effect is to weaken the nerves, and to dull the faculties. They destroy the keenness and relish for a number of enjoyments, that gladden our passage through life. They are followed by depression of spirits, and create a morbid sensibility to uneasy passions, entailing undefinable sensations of languor, discomfort, and irritability, which are continually calling for momentary relief from other and higher stimulants, and causing increased indolence and effeminacy. The connexion between this state and the grossest selfishness is apparent; a person in this condition shrinks from inconveniences which others do not feel; his own sensations irresistibly absorb his attention. power of present sensation is so great, he cannot submit patiently to a want or a privation; nobody knows the extent of his uneasiness, or the sluggishness of his perceptions towards others.

The

Great attention to bodily ease produces similar effects, though in a lesser degree. Our physical constitution is such as to be very much formed by our diet and habits of living. Things which at first were pleasures, become by continuance necessaries; the enjoyment they give is scarcely felt, but the pain of wanting them is excessive. For purposes of bodily and mental health, whatever our station, diet can