d esteems me himself. Your table-talk is such
as persons of the strictest principles may hear, and join in: your
guests, and your friends are, generally speaking, persons of the
genteelest life, and of the best manners. So that Mr. Locke would have
advised _you_, of all gentlemen, had he been living, and known you,
to give your children a home education, and assign these, and still
stronger reasons for it.

But were we to speak to the generality of parents, I fear this would
be an almost insuperable objection to a home education. For (I am
sorry to say it) when one turns one's eyes to the bad precedents given
by the heads of some families, it is hardly to be wondered at, that
there is so little virtue and religion among men. For can those
parents be surprised at the ungraciousness of their _children_,
who hardly ever shew them, that their _own_ actions are governed
by reasonable or moral motives? Can the gluttonous father expect a
self-denying son? With how ill a grace must a man who will often be
disguised in liquor, preach sobriety? a passionate man, patience?
an irreligious man, piety? How will a parent, whose hands are seldom
without cards, or dice in them, be observed in lessons against the
pernicious vice of gaming? Can the profuse father, who is squandering
away the fortunes of his children, expect to be regarded in a lesson
of frugality? 'Tis impossible he should, except it were that the
youth, seeing how pernicious his father's example is, should have the
grace to make a proper use of it, and look upon it as a sea-mark, as
it were, to enable him to shun the dangerous rocks, on which he
sees his father splitting. And even in this _best_ case, let it be
considered, how much shame and disgrace his thoughtless parent ought
to take to himself, who can admonish his child by nothing but the
_odiousness_ of his own vice; and how little it is owing to him, that
his guilt is not _doubled_, by his son's treading in his steps! Let
such an unhappy parent duly weigh this, and think how likely he is to
be, by his bad example, the cause of his child's perdition, as well as
his own, and stand unshocked and unamended, if he can!

It is then of no avail to wish for discreet servants, if the conduct
of the parents is faulty. If the fountain-head be polluted, how shall
the under-currents run clear? That master and mistress, who would
exact from their servants a behaviour which they themselves don't
practice, will be but ill obser