earing
distinctly in all his limbs and features, sometimes we find the figure
wrought up to a great elegancy, but seldom meet with any to which the
hand of _Phidias_ or _Prixiteles_ could not give several nice touches
and finishings.

_The Disadvantages of a bad Education._

SIR,

1. I was condemned by some disastrous influence to be an only son, born
to the apparent prospect of a large fortune, and allotted to my parents
at that time of life when satiety of common diversions allows the mind
to indulge parental affection with great intenseness. My birth was
celebrated by the tenants with feasts and dances and bagpipes;
congratulations were sent from every family within ten miles round; and
my parents discovered in my first cries such tokens of future virtue and
understanding, that they declared themselves determined to devote the
remaining part of life to my happiness and the increase of their estate.

2. The abilities of my father and mother were not perceptibly unequal,
and education had given neither much advantage over the other. They had
both kept good company, rattled in chariots, glittered in play-houses,
and danced at court, and were both expert in the games that were in
their times called in as auxiliaries against the intrusion of thought.

3. When there is such a parity between two persons associated for life,
the dejection which the husband, if he be not completely stupid, must
always suffer for want of superiority, sinks him to submissiveness. My
mamma therefore governed the family without control; and except that my
father still retained some authority in the stables, and now and then,
after a supernumery bottle, broke a looking-glass, or china-dish, to
prove his sovereignty, the whole course of the year was regulated by her
direction; the servants received from her all their orders, and the
tenants were continued or dismissed at her discretion.

4. She therefore thought herself entitled to the superintendance of her
son's education; and when my father, at the instigation of the parson,
faintly proposed that I should be sent to school, very positively told
him, that she would not suffer so fine a child to be ruined: that she
never knew any boys at a grammar-school that could come into a room
without blushing, or set at the table without some awkward uneasiness;
that they were always putting themselves into danger by boisterous
plays, or vitiating their behaviour with mean company; and that for