ABSTRACT
I am living at present in the neighbourhood of a small seaport and fishing village, and in the fresh healthy air which circulates all rouna, children seem to spling up as fast as the mosses and furze which form tho prinCIpal vegetation on the coast. There are excellent School Board schools provided, but children are not obliged to enter them till they are five years of age, and the parents think even that too young to shut up little creatures to lessons for several hours daily. The active movement, the singing, the constant variety in the children's garden, so satisfy the imperious demand for activity at that age, that the little ones like school, and relieve the parents of all need of pressllre to get them to go. Both parents and children delight, too, in the little works they learn to do there, so that early and constant attendance are secured, and the formation from the fu'St, of clean1y, orderly, l"efined habits. On the contrary, the child left to tumble about till five years of age, has already formed habits of dirt and idleness, and has inevitably learned low and COaI'8e language and ideas, poor little thing, from its surroundings. So that at school there is first much to undo, much that can never be effaced, to dim, before the habits ot order, obedience, industry, and cleanliness can be formed. The work is doubled both for teacher and child, and is never so hopeful as it might have been, had the baby of two years entered the bright precincts of the children's
"II1IabWOIlWl', aeYln.] Deoeatber Jadl. 117" Corre'pondence.
