MATERNAL EDUCATION.

The responsibility which is incurred by every mother imperatively calls upon her to seek the best means of making her children good and rational beings. This is not to be done by merely sending them to school for 186instruction. Education must be continued at home, or otherwise its most important results are left to chance, and it mainly depends upon accident or circumstance whether the child becomes vicious or virtuous. All persons may not have the power or the opportunity to direct the infant mind with sufficient steadiness and judgment to produce certain effects. It is much more within the ability of a mother to make her children good-tempered, and to endow them with cheerful, contented dispositions; but even in this, with the best intentions, she may fail from want of understanding the means. It is, however, in the power of all mothers—the learned and the unlearned, the rich and the poor—to have the most decided influence on the moral character of their children, and to make them virtuous members of society. To this end children must be educated by example as well as by precept. Let not parents believe that they are discharging their duty by admonishing their children to do right, while they act at variance with those principles they would inculcate. Children are peculiarly quick-sighted in this respect, and detect the smallest contradiction in act and word with surprising acuteness. That which we wish our children to become, that we should endeavour as much as possible to be ourselves. This is a maxim in parental management which would tend more than any other course to ensure success.