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Untitled Article
well-managed—they feel themselves the point of interest to the little family group , and it makes them vain and self-sufficient and wayward . Such children should have been more let alone—left
to themselves—they should have had occupations which they could pursue alone ; and better would it have been to have let a few follies be committed , and awkwardnesses be contracted , than to have subjected them to that constant watching which spies , into , and as much as possible controls , every little act , or even attitude ,
word , and gesture . Besides the bad effect of producing conceit , this constant watching prevents naturalness of manner and independence of character ; the parent has always supplied mind to the muscle , and so the child knows not how to guide its own muscles when left to itself . Hence the timidity and want of expressive
grace in the manners of grown up people . What a beautiful eloquence there would be in the movements , gesture , carriage , and language of a being , who had never been taught or tutored at all about the matter , but whose mind had been let to control the muscles ! C . has ungraceful attitudes . I believe these will all disappear as her taste and her feelings develope . No one under the influence of passion is ungraceful ; if those under the influence of feeling are , we have to thank for it the hypocrisy which commands us to veil our feelings .
Of all the mistakes people make in education , by far the most fatal is the little use or the bad use made of that omnipotent engine—affection . Oh it is melancholy to look round and see how the affections are crushed by the stern coldness of some parents , and dissipated by the folly of others , who take them and play upon them , to gain some selfish or mean end . There is nothing you cannot obtain by means of the arfections ; as for learning , I don ' t understand not learning from those one loves , nor learning from those one does not love . S . is said to have been the naughtiest little girl that ever was seen or heard of , and very stupid too . One
day having been turned out of the school-room in disgrace for not saying her lesson well , she went and sat down disconsolately at the top of the staircase , the tears pattering down on the brown cover of Chambaud ' s French grammar . ' What is the matter , S . V said R ., who happened to come up stairs just then . ' I can ' t learn these French adverbs . ' ' Give me the book / said R . ' Now say them after me . ' She had not repeated them after R . four times
before she knew the column quite perfectly , and from that day she never failed in any lesson in which R . was her instructor or companion . S . in her turn had the happiness of training to habits of thoughtfulness and energy the mind of a child , who , when she undertook him , seemed almost incapable of being taught . It was as if they had given her a cloud , and told her to change it into something substantial . However , he became so fond of her , that
Untitled Article
858 Memoran da of Observations
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1834, page 858, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2640/page/40/
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