it is no longer charity, but fancy, which is to cover the multitude
of sins.

The fact is, that youth will always be the period of imagination;
and the business of a good education will always be to prevent that
imagination from being thrown inward, and producing a mental fever,
diseasing itself and the whole character by feeding on its own
fancies, its own day dreams, its own morbid feelings, its likes and
dislikes; even if it do not take at last to viler food, to French
novels, and lawless thoughts, which are but too common, alas! though
we will not speak of them here.

To turn the imagination not inwards, but outwards; to give it a
class of objects which may excite wonder, reverence, the love of
novelty and of discovering, without heating the brain or exciting
the passions--this is one of the great problems of education; and I
believe from experience that the study of natural history supplies
in great part what we want. The earnest naturalist is pretty sure
to have obtained that great need of all men, to get rid of self. He
who, after the hours of business, finds himself with a mind relaxed
and wearied, will not be tempted to sit at home dreaming over
impossible scenes of pleasure, or to go for amusement to haunts of
coarse excitement, if he have in every hedge-bank, and wood land,
and running stream, in every bird among the boughs, and every cloud
above his head, stores of interest which will enable him to forget
awhile himself, and man, and all the cares, even all the hopes of
life, and to be alone with the inexhaustible beauty and glory of
Nature, and of God who made her. An hour or two every day spent
after business-hours in botany, geology, entomology, at the
telescope or the microscope, is so much refreshment gained for the