going to bed; and, if many a man, who says that he has not time to teach his children, were to sit down, in sincerity, with a pen and a bit of paper, and put down all the minutes, which he, in every twenty-four hours, wastes over the bottle, or over cheese and oranges and raisins and biscuits, after he has dined; how many he lounges away, either at the coffee-house or at home, over the useless part of newspapers; how many he spends in waiting for the coming and the managing of the tea-table; how many he passes by candle-light, wearied of his existence, when he might be in bed; how many he passes in the morning in bed, while the sun and dew shine and sparkle for him in vain:  if he were to put all these together, and were to add those which he passes in the reading of books for his mere personal amusement, and without the smallest chance of acquiring from them any useful practical knowledge:  if he were to sum up the whole of these, and add to them the time worse than wasted in the contemptible work of dressing off his person, he would be frightened at the result; would send for his boys from school; and if greater book-learning than he possessed were necessary, he would choose for the purpose some man of ability, and see the teaching carried on under his own roof, with safety as to morals, and with the best chance as to health.

308.  If after all, however, a school must be resorted to, let it, if in your power, be as little populous as possible.  As ’evil communications corrupt good manners,’ so the more numerous the assemblage, and the more extensive the communication, the greater the chance of corruption. Jails, barracks, factories, do not corrupt by their walls, but by their condensed numbers.  Populous cities corrupt from the same cause; and it is, because it must be, the same with regard to schools, out of which children come not what they were when they went in.  The master is, in some sort, their enemy; he is their overlooker; he is a spy upon them; his authority is maintained by his absolute power of punishment; the parent commits them to that power; to be taught is to be held in restraint; and, as the sparks fly upwards, the teaching and the restraint will not be divided in the estimation of the boy.  Besides all this, there is the great disadvantage of tardiness in arriving at years of discretion.  If boys live only with boys, their ideas will continue to be boyish; if they see and hear and converse with nobody but boys, how are they to have the thoughts and the character of men?  It is, at last, only by hearing men talk and seeing men act, that they learn to talk and act like men; and, therefore, to confine them to the society of boys, is to retard their arrival at the years of discretion; and in case of adverse circumstances in the pecuniary way, where, in all the creation, is there so helpless a mortal as a boy who has always been at school!  But, if, as I said before, a school there must be, let the congregation be as small as possible; and, do not expect too much from the master; for, if it be irksome to you to teach your own sons, what must that teaching be to him?  If he have great numbers, he must delegate his authority; and, like all other delegated authority, it will either be abused or neglected.