Nor do I think it difficult to show the reason of this.

It is confessed on all hands that our first impressions are the most powerful, both as to their immediate effects and future influence; that they not only form the character of our childhood, but that of our maturer years.

As the mind of a child expands, it searches for new objects of employment or gratification; and this is the time when the young fall an easy prey to those who make a business of entrapping them into the paths of dishonesty, and then of urging them to crimes of deeper dye.

What, then, but a most salutary result can ensue from placing a child in a situation, where its first impressions will be those of the beauty of goodness,--where its first feelings of happiness will consist in the receiving and cherishing kind ness towards its little neighbours?
In after years, and in schools for older children, it is reckoned an unavoidable evil, that they should be congregated together in numbers; not so in the infant school; it is there made use of as a means of developing and exercising those kindly feelings, which must conduce to the individual and general comfort, not only there, but in society generally.

It is not merely by instructing them in _maxims_ of honesty that we seek to provide against the evil; but by the surer way of exciting that feeling of love towards each other--towards every one--which, when found in activity, must not only prevent dishonesty, but every other species of selfishness.
Consider the difference of the cases.