Another school was tried, Julian got expelled this time; and Charles,
in spite of prizes, must, on system, be removed with him: so forth, with
like wisdom, all through the years of adolescence and instruction, those
ill-matched brothers were driven as a pair. Then again, for fashion's
sake, and Aunt Green's whims, the circumspective mother, notwithstanding
all her inconsistencies, gave each of them prettily bound hand-books of
devotion; which the one used upon his knees, and the other lit cigars
withal; both extremes having exceeded her intention: and she proved
similarly overreached when she persisted in treating both exactly alike,
as to liberal allowances, and liberty of will; the result being, that
one of her sons "foolishly" spent his money in a multitude of charitable
hobbies; and that the other was constantly supplied with means for (the
mother was sorry to say it, vulgar) dissipation. By consequence, Charles
did more good, and Julian more evil, than I have time to stop and tell
off.
If any thing in this life must be personal, peculiar, and specific, it
is education: we take upon ourselves to speak thus dogmatically, not of
mere school-teaching only, _musa_, _musae_, and so forth; nor yet of
lectures, on relative qualities of carbon and nitrogen in vegetables;
no, nor even of schemes of theology, or codes of morals; but we do speak
of the daily and hourly reining-in, or letting-out, of discouragement in
one appetite, and encouragement in another; of habitual formation of
characters in their diversity; and of shaping their bear's-cub, or that
child-angel, the natural human mind, to its destined ends; that it may
turn out, for good, according to its several natures, to be either the
strong-armed, bold-eyed, rough-hewer of God's grand designs, or the
delicate-fingered polisher of His rarest sculptures.
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