influence of truly polite parents--the finest discipline in the
world--arrested by the strictures of a purely conventional regimen, in
which the laws of health and the higher spiritual life seem never to
have been consulted.

With such a physical training, associated with a corresponding education
of the mind and heart, they are ripe for the customs and fashions of
life in harmony therewith; and totally averse to the purer, manlier and
nobler duties and pleasures of a better state of society. To dress and
exhibit themselves; to crowd the saloon of every foreign trifler, who,
under the abused name of art, and for the sake of gold, seeks to
minister to us those meretricious excitements which associate themselves
with declining states and artificial forms of life; to waste the most
precious hours of night, set apart by the God of nature for repose, in
dancing, eating, drinking, and revelry, follow naturally enough upon
such training. Then in the rear, come disease of body and mind, broken
constitutions and broken hearts; and last of all, with grim majesty,
death, prematurely summoned, avenges this violation of the laws of
nature upon the miserable victims, and quenches the glare of this
brilliant day in the darkness of the tomb. How utterly different is such
training and such modes of life consequent upon it, from those which are
dictated by a thorough understanding of our nature and the great
purposes of our existence. For in all these things we shall find there
exists a connection sufficiently obvious between the right education of
the spirit and the body; and that so strong is their mutual influence as
to render it of great importance to care for them both in harmony with
each other. Then shall we regard the perfection of the form and the
vigor of our bodily powers. Casting away whatever did not consist with
the health and finer developments of the physical system, we should
pursue that course of education which best prepared the body for its