it.

The most palpable deficiency that is to be found in relation to
the education of children, is a sound judgment to be formed as to
the vocation or employment in which each is most fitted to excel.

As, according to the institutions of Lycurgus, as soon as a boy
was born, he was visited by the elders of the ward, who were to
decide whether he was to be reared, and would be made an
efficient member of the commonwealth, so it were to be desired
that, as early as a clear discrimination on the subject might be
practicable, a competent decision should be given as to the
future occupation and destiny of a child.

But this is a question attended with no common degree of
difficulty. To the resolving such a question with sufficient
evidence, a very considerable series of observations would become
necessary. The child should be introduced into a variety of
scenes, and a magazine, so to speak, of those things about which
human industry and skill may be employed, should be successively
set before him. The censor who is to decide on the result of the
whole, should be a person of great sagacity, and capable of
pronouncing upon a given amount of the most imperfect and
incidental indications. He should be clear-sighted, and vigilant
to observe the involuntary turns of an eye, expressions of a lip,
and demonstrations of a limb.

The declarations of the child himself are often of very small use
in the case. He may be directed by an impulse, which occurs in
the morning, and vanishes in the evening. His preferences change