affert thy caufe, and perpetuate thy honours? -Yet let us not defpond: let us

be charitable; let us be juft. That there ftill are many encouraging exceptions, we acknowledge with pleasure; nor is the attempt in which we are now engaged a proof, that we wholly defpair of the Commonwealth, emafculated and corrupted as are the greatest part of her offspring.

We have already endeavoured to account, in fome measure, for their degeneracy. It will appear yet lefs aftonishing, however as we hinted before it must always be affecting, if we confider the modes of Education which prevail at prefent. Let us briefly trace them, even as far back as the Nursery. There, indeed, the whole character of boys is commonly perverted and ruined. How? By a cruel indulgence of those defires, paffions, fancies, and foolish humours, which should be early checked and regulated, and which, because on the contrary they are foftered

in their wild luxuriance, quickly shoot into a ftrength that is feldom afterwards fubdued, without great difficulty. The littles creatures are flattered, dreffed, decorated, pampered, gratified with money, and en-. tertained with continual encomiums on handfome faces, fine cloaths, good eating, great riches, high rank, and other fuch edifying topics by whom?-by the very perfons whom they are taught to regard as the patterns of wisdom. What is the refult? Their bodies are debilitated, and their minds debased: they are rendered children for life, difqualified to endure fatigue, hunger, and hardship, without unmanly complaints; apt to be deranged by the slightest accident, and discomposed by the leaft contradiction; to be violent, vain, capricious, headftrong, luxurious, mercenary, felfish; flaves to their appetites, tyrants to thofe about them; and thus, in the very rudiments of their exiftence, fo to fpeak, unfitted for whatever is ftrenuous in action, firm in fuffering,

philofophical in life, and amiable in manners. Such, I am fure, is the natural tendency of the conduct we reprobate; nor can I help thinking, that we often perceive in the nursery the embryos of those distorted beings called fops, fribbles, and coxcombs. So at least they were wont to be called: but it is one of our late refinements, to give them an Italian appellation. You may fmile, if you will: I am in earnest when I say, that the lax nerves, the ludicrous decorations, the affected jargon, the trivial conceits, the courtly fimper, the foft infipidity, and the hard unfeeling heart, of the thing now termed a but no, I will not name itmay generally, in the firft inftance, be attributed to the effects of the nursery, whatever improvements of the fame kind it may afterwards receive in the school of Fashion.

If the enfeebling and depraving influence of fuch culture is often happily

I

counterworked by reflection, experience, adverfity, in the fucceeding scenes; if many boys are by the original energy of Nature, and the gracious difcipline of Providence, enabled to outgrow the futile habits of their early years; no thanks to those wicked or foolish parents who did every thing to spoil them.-Ah, ye Mothers of Britain, what a mighty tafk is yours! Of what fuperlative importance to the happiness of mankind! How much have thofe of you to answer for, whose fantastic fondness has, from the very days. in which you ought to have laid the foundation of virtue and glory, entailed corruption and dishonour on your offspring! How ftrangely different from the Mothers of Antiquity, who, having bred their fons to every thing manly and heroic, were accustomed, when they went out to fight for their country, that great predominating object to which all others gave way in their affections-were accuftomed, I fay, to charge them either to come back victoVOL. II. M

rious, or to be brought back dead, chufing rather that they should not live than live in fhame !

When we mention this, we cannot help admiring many of the expedients made ufe of, in the pureft times of the ancient Commonwealths, to infpire their youth with magnanimity. Befide that education was made the immediate concern of the ftate, and the children of individuals were regarded and treated as the children of the public; what impreffions, think ye, muft have been neceffarily produced on young minds by witneffing the laurels, the crowns, the triumphs, the trophies, the monuments, the ftatues, with which illuftrious conquerors and patriots were rewarded, and by hearing the funeral orations and the feftive fongs in praise of their valiant and virtuous progenitors, who had confulted, pleaded, ftruggled, bled in behalf of their country? If, by the defire of kindling in their youth this ardent paffion for glory,