ned, than
encouraged.

Next, we are to be indulged in every thing at school; and our masters
and mistresses are rewarded with further grateful instances of our
boisterous behaviour.

But, in our wise parents' eyes, all looks well, all is forgiven and
excused; and for no other reason, but because we are theirs.

Our next progression is, we exercise our spirits, when brought home,
to the torment and regret of our parents themselves, and torture their
hearts by our undutiful and perverse behaviour to them, which, however
ungrateful in us, is but the natural consequence of their culpable
indulgence to us, from infancy upwards.

And then, next, after we have, perhaps, half broken their hearts, a
wife is looked out for: convenience, or birth, or fortune, are the first
motives, affection the last (if it is at all consulted): and two people
thus educated, thus trained up, in a course of unnatural ingratitude,
and who have been headstrong torments to every one who has had a share
in their education, as well as to those to whom they owe their being,
are brought together; and what can be expected, but that they should
pursue, and carry on, the same comfortable conduct in matrimony, and
join most heartily to plague one another? And, in some measure, indeed,
this is right; because hereby they revenge the cause of all those who
have been aggrieved and insulted by them, upon one another.

The gentleman has never been controlled: the lady has never been
contradicted.

He cannot bear it from one whose new relation, he thinks, should oblige
her to shew a quite contrary conduct.

She thinks it very barbarous, now, for the first time, to be opposed
in her will, and that by a man from whom she expected nothing but
tenderness.

So great is the difference between what they both expect from one
another, and what they both find in each other, that no wonder
misunderstandings happen; that these ripen to quarrels; that acts of
unkindness pass, which, even had the first motive to their union been
affection, as usually it is not, would have effaced all manner of tender
impressions on both sides.

Appeals to parents or guardians often ensue. If, by mediation of
friends, a reconciliation takes place, it hardly ever holds: for why?
The fault is in the minds of both, and neither of them will think so;
so that the wound (not permitted to be probed) is but skinned over, and
rankles still at the bottom, and at last breaks out with more pain an