SECTION VIII. 559 sort of informations be reserved for their firmer years, and let them not be told in their hearing, till they can better judge what trúth or reality there is in them, and be made sensible how much is owing to romance and fiction. Nor let their little hearts be frighted at three or four years old with shocking and bloody histories, with massacres and mar-. tyrdoms, with cuttings and burnings, with the images of horri- ble and barbarous murders, with racks and red hot pincers, with engines of torment and cruelty, with mangled limbs, and carcases drenched in gore. It is time enough, when their spirits are grown a little firmer, to acquaint them with these madnesses and miseries of human nature. There is no need that the history of the holy confessors and martyrs should be set before their thoughts so early in all their most ghastly shapes and colours. These things, when they are a little older, may be of excellent use to discover to them the wicked and bloody principles of per- secution, both among the heathens and the papists ; and to teach them the power of the grace of Christ, in supporting these poor sufferers under all the torments which they sustained for the love of God and the truth. Let their ears be ever kept from all immodest stories, and from' wanton songs; from riddles and puns with double meanings and foul intentions: let them not be suffered to read wanton jests or amorous romances; and due card should be taken to re- move all books out of their way that may defile their imagination, or teach them the language or the sentiments of impurity. Nor let their eyes be entertained with " lewd and unclean pictures, and images of things or actions that are not fit to be exposed." These things indeed have too often an unhappy influence to cor- rupt the fancy and the manners ; and in riper years have beer the occasion of numberless mischiefs : but especially they should be kept far away from the sight or hearing of children, lest too deep and dangerous impressions be made in those early years of life. Nothing but what is chaste, pure and innocent, should come within the reach of their eyes and ears. Even the common ne- cessities and actions of nature, should be always expressed be- fore them in the most modest forms of speech that our mother tongue can furnish us with. In this respect, (as the poet says) children should be treated with great reverence. Maxima debetur pueris revereutia. It is confessed that books of anatomy, and other parts of necessary science, are propér to be written ; and these may be consulted by persons who are grown up to a due age, especially by those whose profession requires it. There is also some neces- sity of foul narratives, where foul crimes are committed, and ought to be publicly exposed and brought to justice and punish- ment. As the affiurs of mankind stand, these things cannot
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