instil, not by set lessons from professors, which he may charge in the
bill, but at school-intervals, as he walks the streets, or saunters
through green fields (those natural instructors), with his pupils.
The least part of what is expected from him, is to be done in
school-hours. He must insinuate knowledge at the _mollia tempera
fandi_. He must seize every occasion--the season of the year--the time
of the day--a passing cloud--a rainbow--a wagon of hay--a regiment of
soldiers going by--to inculcate something useful. He can receive no
pleasure from a casual glimpse of Nature, but must catch at it as an
object of instruction. He must interpret beauty into the picturesque.
He cannot relish a beggar-man, or a gipsy, for thinking of the
suitable improvement. Nothing comes to him, not spoiled by the
sophisticating medium of moral uses. The Universe--that Great Book, as
it has been called--is to him indeed, to all intents and purposes, a
book, out of which he is doomed to read tedious homilies to distasting
schoolboys.--Vacations themselves are none to him, he is only rather
worse off than before; for commonly he has some intrusive upper-boy
fastened upon him at such times; some cadet of a great family; some
neglected lump of nobility, or gentry; that he must drag after him to
the play, to the Panorama, to Mr. Bartley's Orrery, to the Panopticon,
or into the country, to a friend's house, or to his favourite
watering-place. Wherever he goes, this uneasy shadow attends him. A
boy is at his board, and in his path, and in all his movements. He is
boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy.

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but
they are unwholesome companions for grown people. The restraint is
felt no less on the one side, than on the other.--Even a child, that
"plaything for an hour," tires _always_. The noises of children,
playing their own fancies--as I now hearken to them by fits, sporting