vicious, and the prevention of crime."]

That this remedy is effectual, experience has taught me and many
others; and experience is a guide on whom we may safely rely. It has
shown me that by taking children at an early age out of the reach of
contamination in the streets, and removing them in a great measure
from the no less baneful influence of evil example at home, we may lay
such a foundation of virtue, as is not likely to be shaken. Nor do I
think it difficult to show the reason of this. It is confessed on all
hands that our first impressions are the most powerful, both as to
their immediate effects and future influence; that they not only form
the character of our childhood, but that of our maturer years. As the
mind of a child expands, it searches for new objects of employment or
gratification; and this is the time when the young fall an easy prey
to those who make a business of entrapping them into the paths of
dishonesty, and then of urging them to crimes of deeper dye. What,
then, but a most salutary result can ensue from placing a child in a
situation, where its first impressions will be those of the beauty of
goodness,--where its first feelings of happiness will consist in the
receiving and cherishing kind ness towards its little neighbours? In
after years, and in schools for older children, it is reckoned an
unavoidable evil, that they should be congregated together in numbers;
not so in the infant school; it is there made use of as a means of
developing and exercising those kindly feelings, which must conduce
to the individual and general comfort, not only there, but in society
generally. It is not merely by instructing them in _maxims_ of honesty
that we seek to provide against the evil; but by the surer way of
exciting that feeling of love towards each other--towards every
one--which, when found in activity, must not only prevent dishonesty,
but every other species of selfishness.