We have noticed in one of this month's magazines an article which speaks strongly in favor of the boarding school, giving preference to it over the day school. While we do not care to take up a discussion of the purely educational advantages which the two kinds of schools may often offer in different degrees there is one argument urged in behalf of the boarding school which we wish to discredit; the argument, namely, that a young boy, by the experience of a boarding school life, is made manly, self-reliant, independent. The words are often used with very little distinction, but the underlying idea is that the boy at an early age begins to enjoy the privileges and to be credited with certain of the powers of a man, and so becomes decidedly active in shaping his own destiny. There is truth in these statements, but it needs all the American's love of self-sufficiency, and a little thoughtlessness besides, to accept that truth as an effective plea for the boarding school.

At the age of fourteen or less, a boy's place is at home. The influences which surround him should be home influences. The formation of his character can not safely be trusted to any one less interested in him or less intimate with him than his parents; least of all can it be left to his own real childishness under the excitement of a new life. And in this character the time has not come for the development of a vigorous independence; disregard of authority follows it too closely in young people. What the boy wants, and what he can best get at home, is the foundation of ideal on which his life is to be built, and on the strength of which depends not only his pleasure but his success when he at last comes to shift for himself. There are more qualities that go to the making of a man than self-reliance, which well becomes only a strong character on which reliance may confidently be placed, and is therefore unbecoming in young boys, whose characters are necessarily unformed. The boarding school too often developes not true manliness, but rather a heedless independence which is incompatible with it. To put a boy in the way of such development the neglect of higher, is a grave mistake. Self-reliance should not be born of mere freedom from restraint, but of a consciousness of power which can hardly accompany the school boy's immaturity.