little children are capable, when the best parts of their nature are growing vigorously under the light and warmth of parental love. Mrs.
Wesley might pride herself on so breaking the wills of her children by fear as that the youngest in arms learned immediately "to cry softly;" but there was every danger that the early cowed Will would sooner or later start up in desperate rebellion, and claim a freedom which it would be wholly unable to manage. How much safer, and how infinitely more beautiful is the self-control of the little creature who stifles his sobs of pain because his mother's pitying eye is upon him in tender sorrow! or that of the babe who abstains from play, and sits quietly on the floor because somebody is ill; or that of a little hero who will ask for physic if he feels himself ill, or for punishment if he knows himself wrong, out of confidence in the tender justice of the rule under which he lives! I have known a very young child slip over to the cold side of the bed on a winter's night, that a grown-up sister might find a warm one. I have known a boy in petticoats offer his precious new humming-top to a beggar child. I have known a little girl submit spontaneously to hours of irksome restraint and disagreeable employment merely because it was right. Such Wills as these--so strong and yet so humble, so patient and so dignified--were never impaired by fear, but flourished thus under the influence of love, with its sweet incitements and holy supports.
CHAPTER IX.
CARE OF THE POWERS:--HOPE.
We have seen what power of Will a child has. But the Will itself is put in action by Hope and Fear.
What is stronger in an infant than its capacity for Hope and Fear? In its earliest and most unconscious stages of emotion, how its little limbs quiver, and its countenance lights up at the prospect of its food!
and how it turns away its face, or wrinkles it up into a cry, at the sight of a strange countenance, or unusual appearance of dress or place!
And what stronger hint can a parent have than this to look forward to what this hope and fear may grow to?
This great power of Hope must determine the leading features of the character of the man or woman; determine them for good or evil according to the training of the power from this day forward. Shall the man continue a child, or sink into the brute by his objects of hope continuing to be what they are now--food or drink? Shall his frame be always put into commotion by the prospect of pleasant bodily sensations from eating and drinking, and other animal gratifications? Or, when the child arrives at hoping for his mother's smile and his father's praise, shall he stop there, and live for admiration; admiration of his person and dress, his activity, or his cleverness? Shall the gratification of his vanity be the chief interest of his life? Or shall it be ambition?
Shall his perpetual hope be of a higher sort of praise--praise from so large a number as shall give him power over other men, and cause his name to be known beyond his connexions, and his native place, and his country and his age? All this is very low and very small; too little for the requirements of his nature, too little for the peace of his mind and the happiness of his heart. Shall not rather this faculty of hope be nourished up into Faith?--faith which includes at once the fulness of virtuous power and the peace which the world can neither give nor take away. A being in whom the early faculty of Hope has been matured into a steady power of Faith is of the highest and happiest order of men, because the objects of his hope are unchanging and ever-lasting, and they keep all his best powers in strenuous action and in full health and strength. When the mother sees her infant in an ecstacy of hope, first at the food making ready for him, and next at the gay flower within his reach, and afterwards at the flattery of visitors, she should remember that here is the faculty which may hereafter lead and sustain him through days of hunger and nights of watching, or years of toilsome obscurity, or scenes of the unthinking world's scorn, calm and peaceful in the furtherance of the truth of God and the welfare of Man. And if her tender heart shrinks from the anticipation of privation and contempt such as have too often hitherto attended a life of faith, let her remember that in the midst of the most prosperous life there can be no peace but in proportion to the power of faith; and that therefore in training up this faculty of Hope to its highest exercise she is providing most substantially for his happiness, be his lot otherwise what it may.
How is this faculty to be trained?-- First, it must be cherished. Some well-meaning parents repress and even extinguish it, from the notion that this is the way to teach humility and self-denial. The consequence is that they break the mainspring of action in the child's mind, and everything comes to a stand. It is difficult to weaken the power of hope in a human being, and harder still to break it down; but when the thing is done, what sadder spectacle can be seen? Of all moving sights of woe, the most mournful is that of a hopeless child. A single glance at its listless limbs, its dull eye, its languid movements, shows the mischief that has been done. The child is utterly unreliable; a mere burden upon the world. He has no truth, no love, no industry, no intellectual power in him; and if he has any conscience, it is the mere remains,--enough to trouble him, without doing him any good. This is an extreme case, and I trust a rare one. But cases of repressed hope are much more common than they should be. There are too many children who are baulked of their mother's sympathy because she is busy or fretful, or of their father's, because he is stern. Too many little hearts are made to swell in silence because they cannot get justice, or to burn under the suspicion that their aspirations are despised. After this, what can they do? At best, they carry their confidence elsewhere, and make their chief interests away from home: and it is too probable that they will give up their plans and aspirations, and sink down to lower hopes. A boy who aspires to discover the North Pole, or to write a book which will teach the world something greater than it ever knew before, will presently sink down to be greedy after lollypops: and a girl who means to try whether a woman cannot be as good as Jesus Christ, may presently be discouraged down to the point of reckoning on Sunday because she is to have a new ribbon on her bonnet.
In the case of every human being, Hope is to be cherished from first to last; not the hope of the particular thing that the child has set its mind on, unless the thing itself be good; but the hopeful mood of mind.
The busiest mother can have nothing to do so important as satisfying her child's heart by a word or look of sympathy: and the most anxious father can have nothing so grave to occupy him as the peril he puts his child into by plunging him into undeserved fear and disappointment.
Hope is to be cherished without ceasing. But the objects of hope must first be varied and then exalted, that the faculty may be led on from strength to strength, till it is able to fix its aims for itself. To the hope of good eating and drinking must succeed that of clutching gay colours, of hearing mother sing, of having play with father when he comes home; then of having a kitten or a doll to take care of; then of parents' praise for lessons or other work well done; then of self-satisfaction for bad habits cured: then there may be a great spring forward to thoughts of glory;--the glory of being a great sailor, or magistrate, or author, or martyr: and at length, the hope of doing great things for the good of mankind, and of becoming a perfect man. As for times and opportunities of cherishing and exalting hope--every hour is the right time, and every day affords the opportunity. What is needed, is that the parents should have the aim fixed in their hearts; and then their minds, and that of the child, will work towards it as by an instinct. By natural impulse the mother's hand will bring the gay flower, and the kitten or the doll before the child's notice, if it becomes greedy about its food. By natural impulse she will sing its favourite song, or beg play for it of its father after some little virtuous effort of the child's; in natural course, all things in human life, great and small, will present themselves in their heroic aspect to the minds of the parents, and be thus represented to the mind of the child, if once the idea of the future man be firmly associated with that of moral nobleness. If they have in them faith enough steadily to desire for him this moral nobleness above all things, there can be no fear but that their aspiration will communicate itself to him; and his faculty of Hope will ripen into a power of Faith.
I have said nothing of a hope of reward as among the objects of childhood. This is because I think rewards and punishments seldom or never necessary in household education, while they certainly bring great mischief after them. In some cases of bad habit, and in a very early stage of education, they may be desirable, here and there; but as a system, I think rewards and punishments bad. In the case of a very young child who has fallen into a habit of crying at bedtime, or at any particular time of day, or in that of a thoughtless, untidy child, where the object is to impress its memory, or to establish a strong association with time or place, it may be useful to connect some expectation of pain or pleasure with particular seasons or acts, so as to make the infant remember the occasion for self-government, and rouse its will to do right; but this should be only where the association of selfish pleasure or pain is likely to die out with the bad habit, and never where such selfish pleasure or pain can be associated with great permanent ideas and moral feelings. A careless child may be allowed to earn a reward for punctuality at meals, and for putting playthings and dress in their proper place when done with, and for personal neatness, during a specified time; and perhaps for the diligent learning of irksome tasks: and there may be some punishment, declared and agreed upon before hand, and steadily inflicted, for any disagreeable personal habit, or any other external instance of habitual thoughtlessness. But the greater moral aims of the parent are too sacred to be mixed up with the direct personal interests of the child. A child will hardly be nobly truthful who dreads being whipped for a lie; and benevolence will be spoiled in its young beginnings, if any pleasure beyond itself is looked for in its early exercise. A child who has broken a plate, or gone astray for pleasure when sent on an errand, must want confidence in his parents, and be more or less cowardly if he denies the offence; and he will not have more truth or courage on the next occasion for being whipped now. What he needs is to be made wiser about the blessedness of truth and the horrors of falsehood, and more brave about the pain of rebuke: and the whipping will not make him either the one or the other.
I remember being fond of a book in my childhood which yet revolted me in one part. It told of the children of a great family in France, who heard of the poverty of a woman about to lie in, and who bought and made clothes for herself and her infant. Their mother and grandmother made a sort of festival of the giving of these clothes. The children rode in procession on asses, carrying their gifts. One tied her bundle with blue ribbon, and another with pink; and the whole village came out to see, when they alighted at the poor woman's door. I used to blush with indignation over this story; indignation on the poor woman's account, that her pauperism was so exposed; and on that of the children, that they were not allowed the pure pleasure of helping a neighbour, without being applauded at home and by a whole village for what it gave them nothing but satisfaction to do. I am strongly of opinion that when we duly understand and estimate man, there will be no reward or punishment at all; that human beings will be so trained as to find their pleasure and pain in the gratification or the abuse of their own highest faculties; and that in those days (however far off they may be) there will be no treadwheels, no hulks, no gibbets; and no prize-giving, except for feats of skill or activity. And meantime, I feel perfectly sure that children under home-training may be led to find such gratification in the exercise of their higher intellectual and moral faculties, as to feel the abuse of them more painful than any punishment, and their action more pleasurable than any reward. When we read of a Christian in the early ages who was brought into the amphitheatre, and given the choice whether he would declare Jupiter to be the supreme God, and enjoy life and comfort, or avow himself a Christian, and be torn to pieces by wild beasts the next minute, we feel that he _could not_ say he believed Jupiter to be God. Well: convince any child as fully as this of the truth, and of his absolute need of fidelity to it, and he can no more endure lapse from it than the Christian could endure to declare Jupiter to be God. As the inveterate drunkard must gratify his propensity to drink, at the cost of any amount of personal and domestic misery; and as the miser must go on adding to his stores of gold, even though he starves himself into disease and death, so the upright man must satisfy his conscience through every extremity; and no penalty can deter the benevolent man from devoting all he has to give--his money, his time, and his life--to the relief of suffering. On such as these--the upright and the devoted--every appeal to their lower faculties is lost; and as for their hope and fear--they have passed into something higher. With them "perfect love has cast out fear;" and hope has grown up into Faith; and this faith being to them "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," it must be more to them than any of the passing pains and pleasures of life. Exalted as these beings are, they are of the same make as the infant on its mother's lap: and each is destined to derive his highest gratification from the exercise of the noblest faculties of his nature.
If parents did but understand and constantly remember this, they would consider well before they dared to mix up a meaner pleasure and pain with the greater, while appealing to any of the higher moral faculties of their children--if indeed they ventured upon reward and punishment at all.
CHAPTER X.
CARE OF THE POWERS CONTINUED:--FEAR.
There is nothing in which children differ more than in their capacity for Fear. But every child has it more or less,--or ought to have it: for nothing can be made of a human being who has never experienced it. A child who has never known any kind of fear can have no power of Imagination;--can feel no wonder, no impulse of life, no awe or veneration. Such a case probably does not exist, except in a condition of idiotcy. A child who is called fearless, and who is congratulated upon this,--who shows no shyness of strangers, who does not mind cold water, or falls, or being in the dark, who runs after animals, and plays with ugly insects, may yet cower under a starry sky, or tremble at thunder, or be impressed for life by a mysterious dream. It is for the parents to watch the degree and direction of an infant's fear, firmly assured that whatever be this degree and direction, all may end well under prudent care.
The least favourable case is that of the apathetic child. When it appears indifferent to whatever may happen to it, and shrinks from nothing, it must be as incapable of hope and enjoyment as of fear, and there must be something amiss in its health,--in its nervous system; and its health is what must be looked to first. It must be well nourished and amused; its perceptive faculties must be exercised, and every sort of activity must be encouraged. If this succeeds, and its feelings begin to show themselves, fear will come with the rest; and then its education in that respect must begin. But it must ever be carefully remembered that fear often puts on the appearance of apathy,--especially in a proud child. No creature is so intensely reserved as a proud and timid child: and the cases are few in which the parents know anything of the agonies of its little heart, the spasms of its nerves, the soul-sickness of its days, the horrors of its nights. It hides its miseries under an appearance of indifference or obstinacy, till its habitual terror impairs its health, or drives it into a temper of defiance or recklessness. I can speak with some certainty of this, from my own experience. I was as timid a child as ever was born; yet nobody knew or could know, the extent of this timidity; for though abundantly open about everything else, I was as secret as the grave about this. I had a dream at four years old which terrified me to such an excess that I cannot now recal it without a beating of the heart. I could not look up at the sky on a clear night; for I felt as if it was only just above the tree tops, and must crush me. I could not cross the yard except at a run, from a sort of feeling, with no real belief,--that a bear was after me. The horrors of my nights were inexpressible. The main terror however was a magic-lantern which we were treated with once a year, and sometimes twice. We used to talk of this exhibition as a prodigious pleasure; and I contrived to reckon on it as such: but I never saw the white cloth, with its circle of yellow light, without being in a cold perspiration from head to foot. One of the pictures on the slides was always suppressed by my father, lest it should frighten the little ones;--a dragon's head, vomiting flames. He little thought that a girl of thirteen could be terrified by this: but when I was thirteen,--old enough to be put in charge of some children who were to see the magic lantern,--this slide was exhibited by one of my brothers among the rest.
I had found it hard enough to look and laugh before; and now I turned so faint that I could not stand, but by grasping a chair. But for the intensity of my shame, I should have dropped. Much of the benefit of instruction was lost to me during all the years that I had masters: my memory failed me when they knocked at the door, and I could never ask a question, or get voice to make a remark. I could never play to my music master, or sing with a clear voice but when I was sure nobody could hear me. Under all this, my health was bad; my behaviour was dogged and provoking, and my temper became for a time insufferable. Its improvement began from the year when I first obtained some release from habitual fear. During these critical years I misled everybody about me by a habit of concealment on this one subject which I am sure I should not now have strength for under any inducement whatever. Because I climbed our apple tree, and ran along the top of a high wall, and took great leaps, and was easily won by benevolent strangers, and because I was never known to hint or own myself afraid, no one suspected that fear was at the bottom of the immoveable indifference and apparently unfeeling obstinacy by which I perplexed and annoyed everybody about me.
I make these confessions willingly, in the hope that some inexperienced or busy parent may be awakened by them to observe whether the seeming apathy of a child be really from indifference, or the outward working of some hidden passion of fear.
Bold children are good and promising subjects; and it is a delightful thing to a parent's heart to see an infant fairly trying its powers against difficulties and obstacles--confronting nature in all seasons of light and darkness, of sunshine and tempest, in the face of strangers and friends alike, free and fearless. It is delightful to think how much misery and embarrassment he is spared, by his happy constitution of nerves and brain. But, while the proud parent sees in him the future discoverer or sailor, or leader among men, it must be remembered that in order to become great, in order to become truly a man at all, he must learn and endure much that can be learned and endured only through fear, and the conquest of it. That there is some fear in him is certain; and the parent must silently search it out, and train it up into that awe and modesty which are necessary to the high courage of a whole life. No man or woman can be a faithful servant of Duty, qualified to live, suffer, and die for it, who has not grown up in awe of something higher than himself--in veneration of some powers greater than he can understand; and this awe and veneration have in them a large element of fear at the beginning. What this element is, in each case, the parents must set themselves to understand. Too many think it their duty to make a child afraid, if fear does not seem to come of itself: and too many do this without thinking it their duty, from the spirit of opposition being excited in themselves, from the experience of inconvenient fearlessness in the child. I have known a tutor avow his practice of beating a bold boy till he broke two canes over him, because the boy ought to learn that he is under a power (a power of arm) greater than his own, and must, through fear of it, apply himself to his appointed business. Such inflictions make a boy reckless, or obstinate, or deceitful. And I have seen far too many instances of irritable parents who have tried to manage a high-spirited child by threats; and, the threats failing, by blows, or shutting up in the dark, or hobgoblin prophecies, which have created no real awe or obedience, but only defiance, or forced and sullen submission. This will never do. A tender parent will never have the heart to breed fear in a child, knowing that "fear hath torment." A truly loving parent will know that it would be less unkind to bruise his child's limbs, or burn its flesh, than to plant torturing feelings in his mind. The most effectual way, for all purposes, is to discover the fear that is already there, in order to relieve him from it, by changing this weakness into a source of strength and comfort. What is it--this fear that lies hidden in him? A boy who is not afraid of the dark, or of a bull, or of a ghost, may tremble at the sight of a drunken man, or at the hearing of an oath. A girl who is not afraid of a spider or a toad, nor of thieves, nor of climbing ladders, may tremble at the moaning of the wind in the chimney, or at a frown from her mother, or at entering a sick chamber. Whatever be the fear, let the parents watch, carefully but silently, till they have found it out: and, having found it out, let them lead on the child to conquest, both by reason and by bringing such courage as he has to bear on the weak point. In any case, whether of a bold or a timid child, the only completely effectual training comes from the parents' example. If the every day life of the parents shows that they dread nothing but doing wrong, for either themselves or their children, the fears of the most timid and of the boldest will alike take this direction, sooner or later: and the courage of both will, with more or less delay, become adequate to bear and do anything for conscience' sake. If it be the clear rule and habit of an entire household to dread and detest only one thing, the fear and dislike of every mind in the household will become concentred upon that one thing, and every heart will become stout to avoid and repel it. And if the one dreaded thing be sin, it is well; for the courage of each and all will be perpetually reinforced by the whole strength of the best faculties of every mind.
As for the case of the timid child,--let not the parent be disheartened, for the noblest courage of man or woman has often grown out of the excessive fears of the child. It is true, the little creature is destined to undergo many a moment of agony, many an hour of misery, many a day of discouragement; but all this pain may be more than compensated for by the attainment of such a freedom and strength at last as may make it feel as if it had passed from hell to heaven. Think what it must be for a being who once scarcely dared to look round from fear of lights on the ceiling or shadows on the wall, who started at the patter of the rain, or the rustle of the birds leaving the spray, who felt suffocated by the breeze and maddened by the summer lightning, to pass free, fearless and glad through all seasons and their change,--all climes and their mysteries and dangers;--to pass exhilarated through raging seas, over glaring deserts, and among wild forests! Think what it must be for a creature who once trembled before a new voice or a grave countenance, and writhed under a laugh of ridicule, and lied, at the cost of deep mental agony, to avoid a rebuke,--think what it must be to such a creature to find itself at last free and fearless,--enjoying such calm satisfaction within as to suffer nothing from the ridicule or the blame of those who do not know his mind, and so thoroughly acquainted with the true values of things as to have no dread of sickness or poverty, or the world's opinion, because no evil that can befal him can touch his peace!
Think what a noble work it will be to raise your trembling little one to such a condition as this, and you will be eager to begin the task at once, and patient and watchful to continue it from day to day.
First, how to begin. The most essential thing for a timid infant is to have an absolutely unfailing refuge in its mother. It may seem unnecessary to say this. It may appear impossible that a mother's tenderness should ever fail towards a helpless little creature who has nothing but that tenderness to look to: but alas! it is not so. I know a lady who is considered very sweet-tempered, and who usually is so--kind and hospitable, and fond of her children. Her infant under six months old was lying on her arm one day when the dessert was on the table; and the child was eager after the bright glasses and spoons, and more restless than was convenient. After several attempts to make it lie quiet, the mother slapped it--slapped it hard. This was from an emotion of disappointed vanity, from vexation that the child was not "good" before visitors. If such a thing could happen, may we not fear that other mothers may fail in tenderness,--in the middle of the night, for instance, after a toilsome day, when kept awake by the child's restlessness, or amidst the hurry of the day, when business presses, and the little creature will not take its sleep? Little do such mothers know the fatal mischief they do by impairing their child's security with them. If they did, they would undergo anything before they would let a harsh word or a sharp tone escape them, or indulge in a severe look or a hasty movement. A child's heart responds to the tones of its mother's voice like a harp to the wind; and its only hope for peace and courage is in hearing nothing but gentleness from her, and experiencing nothing but unremitting love, whatever may be its troubles elsewhere. Supposing this to be all right, the mother will feel herself from the first the depositary of its confidence;--a confidence as sacred as any other, though tacit, and about matters which may appear to all but itself and her infinitely small. Entering by sympathy into its fears, she will incessantly charm them away, till the child becomes open to reason,--and even afterwards; for the most terrible fears are precisely those which have nothing to do with reason. She will bring it acquainted with every object in the room or house, letting it handle in merry play everything which could look mysterious to its fearful eyes, and rendering it familiar with every household sound. Some of my worst fears in infancy were from lights and shadows. The lamp-lighter's torch on a winter's afternoon, as he ran along the street, used to cast a gleam, and the shadows of the window frames on the ceiling; and my blood ran cold at the sight, every day, even though I was on my father's knee, or on the rug in the middle of the circle round the fire. Nothing but compulsion could make me enter our drawing-room before breakfast on a summer morning; and if carried there by the maid, I hid my face in a chair that I might not see what was dancing on the wall. If the sun shone (as it did at that time of day,) on the glass lustres on the mantel-piece, fragments of gay colour were cast on the wall; and as they danced when the glass drops were shaken, I thought they were alive,--a sort of imps.
But, as I never told any body what I felt, these fears could not be met, or charmed away; and I grew up to an age which I will not mention before I could look steadily at prismatic colours dancing on the wall. Suffice it that it was long after I had read enough of Optics to have taught any child how such colours came there. Many an infant is terrified at the shadow of a perforated night-lamp, with its round spaces of light.
Many a child lives in perpetual terror of the eyes of portraits on the walls,--or of some grotesque shape in the pattern of the paper-hangings.
Sometimes the terror is of the clack of the distant loom, or of the clink from the tinman's, or of the rumble of carts under a gateway, or of the creak of a water-wheel, or the gush of a mill-race. Everything is or may be terrifying to a timid infant; and it is therefore a mother's charge to familiarise it gently and playfully with everything that it can possibly notice, making sport with all sights, and inciting it to imitation of all sounds--from the drone of the pretty bee to the awful cry of the old clothes-man;--from the twitter of the sparrows on the roof to the toll of the distant church bell.
It is a matter of course that no mother will allow any ignorant person to have access to her child who will frighten it with goblin stories, or threats of the old black man. She might as well throw up her charge at once, and leave off thinking of household education altogether, as permit her child to be exposed to such maddening inhumanity as this. The instances are not few of idiotcy or death from terror so caused.
While thus preventing or scattering fears which arise from the imagination, both parents should be constantly using the little occasions which are always arising, for exercising their child's courage. The most timid children have always courage in one direction or another. While I was trembling and fainting under magic-lanterns and street cries, I could have suffered any pain and died any death without fear, the circumstances being fairly laid before me. Let the timid child be made hardy in its play by example and encouragement. Let it be cheered on to meet necessary pain without flinching,--the taking out a thorn, or pulling out a tooth. Let it early hear of real heroic deeds,--hear them spoken of with all the affectionate admiration with which we naturally speak of such acts. If a life is saved from fire or drowning, let the children hear of it as a joyful fact. Let them hear how steadily William Tell's little son stood, for his father to shoot through the apple. Let them hear how the good man who was on his way to be burnt for his religion took off his shoes, and gave them to a barefooted man who came to stare at him, saying that the poor man wanted the shoes, but he could do without them now. Let them hear of the other good man who was burnt for his religion, and who promised some friends, in danger of the same fate, that he would clasp his hands above his head in the midst of the fire, if he found the pain so bearable that he did not repent, and who did lift up his arms and join them after his hands were consumed,--so giving his friends on the hill-side comfort and strength. If any child of your acquaintance does a brave thing, or bears pain cheerfully, let your children hear of it as a good and happy thing.
Above all, let them see, as I said before, all their lives long, that _you_ fear nothing but wrong-doing,--neither tempests nor comets, nor reports of famine or fever, nor the tongues of the quarrelsome, nor any other of the accidents of life,--no pain, in short, but pain of conscience,--and the same spirit will strengthen in them. Their fear will follow the direction of yours; their courage will come in sympathy with yours; and their minds will fill more and more with thoughts of hope and heroism which must in time drive out such remaining terrors as cannot be met by fact or reason.
In this fearlessness of yours is included fearlessness for your children, as well as for yourselves. While their limbs are soft and feeble, of course you must be strength and safety to them: but when they arrive at a free use of their limbs and senses, let them fully enjoy that free use. We English are behind almost every nation in the strength and hardihood of the race of children. In America, I have seen little boys and girls perched in trees overhanging fearful precipices, and crawling about great holes in bridges, while the torrent was rushing below; and I could not learn that accidents from such practices were ever heard of. In Switzerland I have seen mere infants scrambling among the rocks after the goats,--themselves as safe as kids, from the early habit of relying on their own powers. In Egypt and Nubia I have seen five-year old boys poppling about like ducks in the rapids of the Nile, while some, not much older, were not satisfied with hauling and pushing, as our boat ascended the cataract, but swam and dived, to heave off her keel from sunken rocks. Such children are saved from danger, as much as from fear, by an early use of all the powers they have: and it would be a happy thing for many an English child if its parents were brave enough to encourage it to try how much it can do with its wonderful little body. Of this, however, we shall have to say more under another head.
CHAPTER XI.
CARE OF THE POWERS CONTINUED:--PATIENCE.
Some may be surprised to find Patience spoken of among the Powers of Man. They have been accustomed to consider it a passive quality, and not as involving action of the mind. They do not find it in any catalogue of the organs of the brain, and have always supposed it a mere negation of the action of those organs.
But patience is no negation. It is the vigorous and sustained action, amidst outward stillness, of some of the most powerful faculties with which the human being is endowed; and primarily of its powers of Firmness and Resistance. The man who holds up his head, quiet and serene, through a season of unavoidable poverty or undeserved disgrace, is exercising his power of Firmness as vigorously as the general who