CHAPTER IX.
Matilall and his Friends.
When a child is once corrupted, it is hard to effect any improvement. Every means should be tried to instil good principles into the mind from childhood: the character may then ripen for good and the mind become more strongly bent towards the right than towards evil; but if a boy gets hold of bad companions or receives ill advice in his early boyhood, then, such is the unsteadiness natural to his age, all will probably go wrong with him thereafter. So long then as he remains still a boy, with the mind of a boy, he must be assiduously employed in a variety of good pursuits. If boys were to receive an education like this up to the age of twenty-five, there would be no probability of their following evil courses: their minds would by that time have become so elevated that the mere mention of evil would excite anger and loathing. But it is very difficult for children in this country to receive such a training, owing, in the first place, to the lack of good teachers, and in the second to the lack of good books. There is urgent need of works that will promote the growth of high principles and of sound judgment, but ordinary people are persuaded that a solid education consists in teaching the meaning of a number of sounds: then again, very few people seem to have any idea of the methods whereby good principles are implanted in the mind; and finally the nature of the home surroundings of children in this country is strongly against the implanting of such principles. One
