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fording upon young people any thing which it is particularly wished they should value ; and more discretion might certainly be used in finding out , and adapting to a child ' s state and turn of mind , the reading suitable to encourage proper religious impressions . For instance , if learning by rote be burdensome , and to some children it is much more so than to others , what
a grievous loss of opportunity is incurred , what chances run of inspiring disgust instead of relish , by compelling them to get by heart even Mrs . Barbauld ' s beautiful Prose Hymns \ There are few children , probably , so dull as not to be touched and impressed by these compositions when judiciously read by a parent ; and before the unfortunate association of learning by rote has been formed , we have been eagerly importuned by very young children to read them again and again , and have witnessed their delighted attempts to
read for themselves . Nothing but forbearance on the parent ' s part is wanting to make such delightful books as acceptable and popular among children as among adults ; nothing is easier than to make a child ' s association with the best things unpleasant . It would be well , too , if there were more stories unexceptionable in point of doctrine , and pleasing in style , which taught something better than mere worldly morality . It is surely not right to put tricks upon children , or to have them tutored to be good by the notion
of being " always happy . " It is as well , too , not to make such a motive as the love of their parents and friends , the constant stimulant , though it should , no doubt , have a high place in our list of worthy motives . They should , as early as they can bear it , be led to feel the ground on which they stand as candidates for immortality ; they should see , as far as possible , to what point their education is tending ; that it is the beginning of a discipline through which all must pass ; that certain dispositions will , by a moral necessity ,
lead to misery , and therefore must be shunned ; that others , on the contrary , as certainly will issue in final happiness ; and that the directory by which we attain the knowledge of good and evil is open to both parent and child . When these principles are recognized , they may be exemplified in a thousand engaging forms , and it is not giving them a fair advantage to withhold that species of illustration which is perfectly allowable and compatible with the most accurate notions and principles of religion . Let us
not , however , be misunderstood when we maintain that it is an essential point to give a child a strong feeling of interest in religion : we do not mean to say that what amounts to constant excitement is desirable . A well-judging parent will not lavish all the stores of pleasure in the early periods of instruction , and leave nothing but drudgery for succeeding years . Information must be imparted on these as on other subjects , in a more or less inviting form ; and if there be one point more than another which needs the strictest attention , it is that of conducting the understanding and the
affections together in the way of life . " Mrs . Sherwood ' s Tales for young people have served an important purpose in connecting pleasurable ideas with religious subjects , and on that account , their wide circulation is , on the whole , oeneficial . Her stories on the Church Catechism ( a closely printed 5 * . volume , which has now entered the 12 th edition ) have , in the hands of teachers of charity-schools , not to mention parents , been the means of making that part of the " National " instruction interesting , and of communicating some ideas which it is probable never would have been formed in the mind of a child , had the
Catechism been left to do its work alone- This , however , is equivocal praise . w The Lady of the Manor" is an attempt of the same kind for the benefit of the middle and higher ranks of young females ; and , widely as we differ from
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Review . —Mrs , Shertvood's Lady of the Manor . 195
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1827, page 195, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1794/page/35/
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