life pass away with the pleasures of a second youth;
for as the vexations which men receive from their children hasten the
approach of age, and double the force of years; so the comforts which
they reap from them, are balm to all other sorrows, and disappoint
the injuries of time. Parents of children repeat their lives in their
offspring; and their concern for them is so near, that they feel all
their sufferings and enjoyments as much as if they regarded their own
proper persons. But it is generally so far otherwise, that the common
race of 'squires in this kingdom use their sons as persons that are
waiting only for their funerals, and spies upon their health and
happiness; as indeed they are, by their own making them such. In cases
where a man takes the liberty after this manner to reprehend others, it
is commonly said, Let him look at home. I am sorry to own it; but
there is one branch of the house of the Bickerstaffs who have been as
erroneous in their conduct this way as any other family whatsoever. The
head of this branch is now in town, and has brought up with him his son
and daughter, who are all the children he has, in order to be put some
way into the world, and see fashions. They are both very ill-bred cubs;
and having lived together from their infancy, without knowledge of the
distinctions and decencies that are proper to be paid to each other's
sex, they squabble like two brothers. The father is one of those who
knows no better than that all pleasure is debauchery, and imagines, when
he sees a man become his estate, that he will certainly spend it. This
branch are a people who never had among them one man eminent either for
good or ill: however, have all along kept their heads just above water,
not by a prudent and regular economy, but by expedients in the matches
they have made in to their house. When one of the family has in the
pursuit of foxes, and in the entertainment of clowns, run out the third
part of the value of his estate, such a spendthrift has dressed up his
eldest son, and married what they call a good fortune: who has supported
the father as a tyrant over them during his life, in the same house or
neighbourhood. The son, in succession, has just taken the same method
to keep up his dignity, till the mortgages he has ate and drank himself
into have reduced him to the necessity of sacrificing his son also, in
imitation of his progenitor. This had been for many generations, the
whole that had happe