pellation, they let me into some particulars of
the Squire's mode of bringing up his children. There is an odd mixture
of eccentricity and good sense in all the opinions of my worthy host.
His mind is like modern Gothic, where plain brick-work is set off with
pointed arches and quaint tracery. Though the main ground-work of his
opinions is correct, yet he has a thousand little notions, picked up
from old books, which stand out whimsically on the surface of his
mind.

Thus, in educating his boys, he chose Peachem, Markam, and such like
old English writers, for his manuals. At an early age he took the lads
out of their mother's hands, who was disposed, as mothers are apt to
be, to make fine, orderly children of them, that should keep out of
sun and rain and never soil their hands, nor tear their clothes.

In place of this, the Squire turned them loose to run free and wild
about the park, without heeding wind or weather. He was, also,
particularly attentive in making them bold and expert horsemen; and
these were the days when old Christy, the huntsman, enjoyed great
importance, as the lads were put under his care to practise them at
the leaping-bars, and to keep an eye upon them in the chase.

The Squire always objected to their riding in carriages of any kind,
and is still a little tenacious on this point. He often rails against
the universal use of carriages, and quotes the words of honest Nashe
to that effect. "It was thought," says Nashe, in his Quaternio, "a
kind of solecism, and to savour of effeminacy, for a young gentleman
in the flourishing time of his age to creep into a coach, and to
shroud himself from wind and weather: our great delight was to
outbrave the blustering Boreas upon a great horse; to arm and prepare
ourselves to go with Mars and Bellona into the field, was our sport
and pastime; coaches and caroches we left unto them for whom they were
first invented, for ladies and gentlemen, and decrepit age and
impotent people."

The Squire insists that the English gentlemen have lost much of their
hardiness and manhood, since the introduction of carriages. "Compare,"
he will say, "the fine gentleman of former times, ever on horseback,
booted and spurred, and travel-stained, but open, frank, manly, and
chivalrous, with the fine gentleman of the present day, full of
affectation and effeminacy, rolling along a turnpike in his voluptuous
vehicle. The young men of those days were rendered brave, and lofty,
and