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Untitled Article
of education from the very first , and j a the nature and direction of them , the f uture character of the young , or , pore strictly , their future happiness and misery , * will be involved . And w hile it is erroneous to conceive that
education can begin too early , it is scarcely less so to presume that , in respect of the parent ' s lessons aad discipline , it should soon cease , or that it should not comprehend a much larger portion of life than the age of childhood .
Thinking persons will acknowledge that no period is so hazardous to a man s principles , character and conduct as the interval between his quitting his father ' s house and his obtaining a settlement in the world . Now the situation in which most young
people are placed after they have passed through scenes of elementary instruction , are extremely different : for which reason there is frequently a like difference in their habits ; even though they spent their first years together , and were then submitted to much the same course of treatment .
When they go from home , one has one set of companions , and another has another j this is under influences to which his former associates remain strangers : and hence their tastes
pursuits and acquisitions have an answerable variety . During this period the characters of men are perhaps more powerfully formed than in any other stage of their mortal being .
If these considerations are undisputed , it follows that superficial observers often imagine an education to be similar which ought not to be so deno minated , and that , in proportion as the education of any two men is really similarthe difference in its
, effects is not so extensive and important as may usually be supposed . Hap-P would it be were parents , and those who fill the place of parents , Poetically attentive to this truth in the si tuations which they choose for ¦ jl j » j » / . w . k # /
. ¦* — - ^ v m * - — ^_^ -a m . ^ ,. - ^_ w ^^ M ^_^ ^~ r _ ^_ -m ^^ r » their offspring between the ages of yout h and manhood ! Let it fu rther be remembered that power of external circumstances yon young and tender minds , is next 10 ^ resistible .
Before the full establishment of the at > its , such minds are susceptible of this 1 ° fr ° every ob J ect : aud mi ° ^ our uature operates , in " y stances ; , lo % after the young
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are released from the authority of parents and teachers and masters . A fact so obvious should be taken into the account when we are estimating the influeuce of education . To the
rising generation it suggests , at the same time , a warning of infinite importance . It is not sufficient that they are , as the world terms it , ' welldisposed .- it is not sufficient that , in their retired hours , they recollect a parents pious admonitions . They are not safe without a wise and successful
regard to the choice of companions and to the description of the scenes where they meet them . Ruin awaits the youth who too confidently relies on his ability to preserve himself pure amidst surrounding irreligion and licentiousness . He who ventures to the
utmost boundary which divides vice from virtue , will be carried , by subtlety or force , into the camp of the enemy , and pay the forfeit of his dearest interests . I was forcibly reminded of the correctness of this
reasoning on reading of a young man * who , merely as the consequence of going , clandestinely , from his father ' s house , to a spot on which he ought never to have set his foot , was betrayed into the aggravated crimes of
robbery and niurder , for which his far guiltier accomplice satisfied with his life offended justice . Here was a case , alas ! no solitary case , of one who * because lie had made a single , and , as he would consider it , a slight , departure from the road of obedience and
industry , in a word , because he did not weigh the influence of situation , was drawn into the most fa tal snare I With such examples before their eyes of the power of circumstances over
character , let 110 persons say that the varieties in character are inexplicable : let no persons wonder that the effects are dif ferent where , after all , the causes are not , and cannot be , substantially , the same .
O the influence of situation upon mental taste , two examples fire thus recorded by Dr . Johnson . f " In the window of his [ Cowley ' s ] mother ' s apartment lay Spenser ' s Fairy Queen , in which he very early took delight to read , till , by feeling
* lie was admitted King s evidence against his companion at the Leuf a&sizes for Surrey , in 1 S 14 . f Works , vol . ix . 2 .
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V Essay on the different Effects of a similar Education . $ 13
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1815, page 213, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1759/page/13/
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