he
performed, six eggs to reward the labour of his life!

This poor man's ambition appears obviously absurd; and we are under no
immediate apprehension, that parents should inspire their children
with the enthusiasm necessary to the profession of a juggler: but,
unless some precautions are taken, the objects which excite the
ambition of numbers, may be placed so as to deceive the eye and
imagination of children; and they may labour through life in pursuit
of phantoms. If children early hear their parents express violent
admiration for riches, rank, power, or fame, they catch a species of
enthusiasm for these things, before they can estimate justly their
value; from the countenance and manner, they draw very important
conclusions. "Felicity is painted on your countenance," is a polite
phrase of salutation in China. The taste for looking happy, is not
confined to the Chinese: the rich and great,[77] by every artifice of
luxury, endeavour to impress the spectator with the idea of their
superior felicity. From experience we know, that the external signs of
delight are not always sincere, and that the apparatus of luxury is
not necessary to happiness. Children who live with persons of good
sense, learn to separate the ideas of happiness and a coach and six;
but young people who see their fathers, mothers, and preceptors, all
smitten with sudden admiration at the sight of a fine phaeton, or a
fine gentleman, are immediately infected with the same absurd
enthusiasm. These parents do not suspect, that they are perverting
the imagination of their children, when they call them with foolish
eagerness to the windows to look at a fine equipage, a splendid
cavalcade, or a military procession; they perhaps summon a boy, who is
intended for a merchant, or a lawyer, to hear "the spirit stirring
drum;" and they are afterwards surprised, if he says, when he is
fifteen or sixteen, that, "_if his father pleases_, he had rather go
into the army, than go to the bar." The mother is alarmed, perhaps,
about the same time, by an unaccountable predilection in her
daughter's fancy for a red coat, and totally forgets having called the
child to the window to look at the smart cockades, and to hear the
tune of "See the conquering hero comes."

"Hear you me, Jessica," says Shylock to his daughter, "lock up my
doors; and when you hear the drum, and the vile squeaking of the
wry-necked fife, clamber not you up into the casements then."

Shylock's ex