[1]
THE
Convent School,
OR
EARLY EXPERIENCES
OF
A YOUNG FLAGELLANT.

[3]

The dicta of the Wise Man concerningdiscipline have been the source of inexpressibledolour to children for very many centuries;and it has only been within the lastsixty years that ferocity in the treatment ofinfants (I am speaking of English children,Jean Jacques Rousseau shamed the Frenchout of the practice of beating their offspring,nearly a hundred years ago) has been graduallydiminishing. In the eighteenth centurythe lot of the British juvenile was certainly a[4] cruel one That admirable woman, themother of the Wesleys, held that a childshould be made to desist from crying and to“fear the rod” at the mature age of twelvemonths; and Miss Maria Semple, writing oneducation in 1812, tells a story of a lady whowas educated in early years by a relative.“On a certain day in every week she receivedcorporal chastisement. If she had committedfaults, ‘the punishment was due;’ ifshe had not, she probably would in the weekensuing. At the distance of more than half-a-century,the memory of this person, whobore a public character of piety and virtue,was spoken of, and justly, with aversion bythe person she had thus treated.” ThusMiss Maria Semple.—“G. A. S.,” in theIllustrated London News.