soft and refreshing as the touch of a rose-leaf to a feverish cheek.

Ought not parents and children, then, to be fond of each other?

You who can interrupt me with such a question, must have a very fond notion of fondness. Whatever is peculiar in fondness, whatever distinguishes it from love is wrong. Fondness may, if you please, dote and be foolish: love is only another name for wisdom-it is the wisdom of the affections, as wisdom is the love of the understanding. Fondness may flatter, and be flattered; love shrinks from flattery, from giving or receiving it.

There is no greater necessity for a father's or mother's love to vent itself in dispraising their child, than for the child's love to vent itself in dispraising its father and mother. The latter is too pure and reverential to do so, why should the former be less reverential? Or can any object be fitter to excite reverence than the spirit of a child, newly sent forth from God, with all the fascination of helplessness, and with the secret destinies of its future being, hanging like clouds around its unconscious form?

On the contrary, as the less water you have in your kettle, the sooner it begins to make a noise, and smoke; so it is with affection, the less there is the more speedily it sounds and smokes, and evaporates. Nay, when parents are much in the

F

habit of showering praises on their children, it is mostly for the pleasing vapour which rises upon themselves.

Equally groundless would be the notion, that the children need to be thus made much of, in order to love their parents; such treatment rather weakens and shakes affection. For there is an instinct of modesty in the human soul, that instinct which manifests itself so beautifully by enabling us to blush; and until this instinct has been made callous, by the rub of life, it cannot help looking distrustfully at praise. The very pleasure occasioned by praise, is of a kind which implies it to be something unexpected and forbidden, and not more than half deserved. Besides, as I have already said, the habit of feeding on it, breeds such an insatiable hunger after it, that even a parent may, in time, grow to be valued chiefly as he ministers to the gratification of this appetite. Affection, to be pure and durable, must be altogether objective; it may indeed be nursed, by the memory of benefits received, but it has nothing to do with hope, except the hope of intercourse and communion; of interchanging kind looks and words, and of performing kind deeds. Whatever is besides this, is not love.

GUESSES AT TRUTH.

ON EMULATION.

To imitate an example is one thing; to rival any person, and endeavour to obtain a superiority over him, is another. It is very true, as it is maintained by the defenders of emulation, that it is impossible to make progress towards excellence, without outstripping others. But surely there is a great difference between this being a mere consequence of exertions, arising from other motives, and a zeal to attain this object, being itself a motive for exertion. Every one must see, that the effects produced on the mind, in the two cases, will be extremely dissimilar. Emulation is a desire of surpassing others for the sake of superiority; and is a very powerful motive to exertion. I cannot but think emulation a very unhallowed principle of action, as scarcely, if at all, to be disjoined from jealousy and envy; from pride and contention: incompatible with loving our neighbour as ourselves, and a principle of such potency. as to be likely to engross the mind, and turn it habitually and violently from the motives which it should be the great business of education to cherish and render predominant: namely, a sense of duty, and gratitude, and love to God.

If emulation is an unhallowed motive, it cannot innocently be employed, whatever good effects may be expected from it. We must not do evil that good may come.

But if any Christians should deem it not absolutely unhallowed, few, I think, will deny that it is questionable and dangerous. I have often heard of virtuous emulation ;-but can emulation be ever so characterized in a Christian sense?

But it is not sufficient, not to excite and employ emulation on plan and system as a stimulus in education; great care ought to be taken to exclude it. And great care will be necessary, for it will be continually ready to shew itself, and if not checked, it will soon attain strength; strike its roots deep in the heart, and produce bitter fruits; which, in the eyes of a Christian, will be ill compensated by the extraordinary vigour and energy it will give to scholastic studies. BABINGTON.

IF you teach a child to scorn to be undone, to thirst for distinction and applause, is it any wonder that he continues to act all his life in the same manner? Now if a youth is ever to be so far a Christian, as to govern his heart by the doctrines of humility, I would fain know, at what time he is to begin it? or if he is ever to begin it at all, why we train him up in tempers quite con

trary to it? How dry and poor must the doctrine of humility sound to a youth that has been spurred up to all his industry by ambition, emulation, and a desire of glory and distinction? And if he is not to act by these principles when he is a man, why do we call him to act by them in his youth? I know it is asserted, that it is not envy, but emulation, that is intended to be awakened in the minds of young persons. But this is vainly said; for when children are taught to bear no rival, and to scorn to be outdone by any of their age, they are plainly and directly taught to be envious.It is impossible for any one to have this scorn of being outdone, and this contention with rivals, without burning with envy against those that seem to excel him, or get any distinction from him ; so that what children are taught, is rank envy, only covered with a name of a less odious sound.

If envy is thus confessedly bad, and it be only emulation that is endeavoured to be awakened in children, surely there ought to be great care taken that children may know the one from the other; that they may abominate the one, as a great crime, whilst they give the other admission into their minds. But if this were to be attempted, the fineness of the distinction between envy and emulation would show that it was easier to divide them in words, than to separate them in action. For emulation, when it is defined in its best man