of a higher and more decisive denomination. It would be strange indeed, if one who was initiated in the true science of the human mind, did not know how to wake the springs of the soul of an infant. And, while the pupil is continually subject to the most auspicious influences in all that is most essential to human welfare, while his mind is impregnated with the most generous sentiments and the purest virtues, it may well be believed that, in incidental and inferior points, he will not disgrace the principles by which he has been formed.

ESSAY XV.

OF CHOICE IN READING.

A DIFFICULTY which frequently presents itself in the private and domestic intercourse of parent and child, is that of determining what books it is proper that children should read, and what books they should not read.

It often happens that there are books, read by the parent, which are conceived improper for the child. A collection of books, it may be, is viewed through glass doors, their outsides and labels are visible to the child; but the key is carefully kept,

and a single book only at a time, selected by the parent, is put into his hands. A daughter is prohibited from the reading of novels; and in this prohibition will often commence a trial of skill, of quick conveyance on the part of the child, and of suspicious vigilance on the part of the parent.

Ought children to be thus restrained? Is it our duty to digest for our offspring, as the church of Rome has been accustomed to digest for her weaker members, an Index Expurgatorius, a catalogue of those books in the reading of which they may be permitted to indulge themselves?

Various are the mischiefs that inevitably flow out of such a precaution.

First, a wall of separation is thus erected between children and adults. They are made prisoners, and subjected to certain arbitrary regulations; and we are constituted their jailors. All generous reciprocity is destroyed between the two parties. I cannot ardently love a person who is continually warning me not to enter his premises, who plants a hedge about my path, and thwarts me in the impulses of my heart. I cannot understand the reasons that dictate his judgments; it is well if he understand them himself. I cannot therefore regard him as my friend. Friendship requires that the man in whose bosom it reigns, should act, and appear to act, for the interest of the object of his friendship. It is essentially hostile to all mys

tery. What I do not understand, cannot excite my affections. The man who shuts against me the secrets of his heart, cannot be unreservedly beloved by me. Friendship requires that the hearts of the persons should, as it were, be amalgamated into one substance, that their thoughts should be transparent to each other, and their communications entire. This perhaps can never be effected in its utmost extent. But it is of the most unfavourable effect, where the division and reserve pertinaciously force themselves upon observation.

Secondly, the despotism which is thus exercised, is peculiarly grating to a mind of generosity and spirit. Curiosity is one of the strongest impulses of the human heart. To curiosity it is peculiarly incident, to grow and expand itself under difficulties and opposition. The greater are the obstacles to its being gratified, the more it seems to swell, and labour to burst the mounds that confine it. Many an object is passed by with indifference, till it is rendered a subject of prohibition, and then it starts up into a source of inextinguishable passion. It may be alleged, that "this uneasiness and impatience in a young person are capable of being corrected." But is this any thing more than saying in other words, that the finest springs of the human mind may be broken, and the whole reduced to a chaos of dishonourable lumber? As long as the fiery grandeur of the soul remains,

that will not be controled, and cannot be moulded by the frigid dictates of another's will, the kind of prohibitions here spoken of, will be felt with exquisite indignation, and, though involuntarily, will be registered as examples of a galling injustice,

Thirdly, the trial of skill thus instituted between the parent and child, is of the most pernicious tendency. The child is employed in doing that, in which it is his endeavour not to be detected. He must listen with anxious attention, lest he should be burst in upon before he is aware. He must break off his reading, and hide his book, a thousand times upon a false alarm. At length, when the interruption really occurs, he must rouse his attention, and compose his features. He imposes imperious silence upon the flutterings of his heart; he pitches to the true key of falshood the tone of his voice; the object of his most anxious effort, is to appear the thing that he is not. It is not possible to imagine a school of more refined hypocrisy.

The great argument in favour of this project of an Index Expurgatorius, is derived from the various degrees of moral or immoral tendency that is to be found in literary compositions.

One of the most obvious remarks that offer themselves under this head, is, that authors themselves are continually falling fnto the grossest mistakes in this respect, and show themselves superlatively

ignorant of the tendency of their own writings. Nothing is more futile, than the formal and regular moral frequently annexed to Esop's fables of animals. Examine the fable impartially, and you will find that the lesson set down at the foot of it, is one of the last inferences that would have occurred to you. It is in a very different temper that the book-maker squeezes out what he calls his Use, from that in which the reader becomes acquainted with the circumstances of the fable.

To ascertain the moral of a story, or the genuine tendency of a book, is a science peculiarly abstruse. As many controversies might be raised upon some questions of this sort, as about the number six hundred and sixty six in the book of Revelations.

What is the tendency of Homer's Iliad? The author seems to have designed it, as an example of the fatal consequences of discord among political allies. One of the effects it appears most conspicuously to have produced, is that of enhancing the false lustre of military atchievements, and perpetuating the noxious race of heroes in the world.

What is the tendency of Gulliver's Travels, particularly of that part which relates to the Houyhnmhns and Yahoos? It has frequently been affirmed to be, to inspire us with a loathing aversion to our species, and fill us with a frantic pre