A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies / Or, a Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses

E-text prepared by J. Paul Morrison
Transcriber's Notes:
With Letters, Tales and Fables, for amuſement and Inſtruction. ILLUSTRATED WITH CUTS. THE FIFTEENTH EDITION, WITH CONSIDERABLE ADDITIONS AND ALTERATIONS.
Printed for DARTON and HARVEY, Gracechurch-ſtreet, CROSBY and LETTERMAN, Stationers-Court, and E. NEWBERY, St. Paul's Church-yard; and B.C. COLLINS, Saliſbury.
THE INTRODUCTION.
I AM very much concerned when I see young gentlemen of fortune and quality so wholly set upon pleasure and diversions, that they neglect all those improvements in wisdom and knowledge which may make them easy to themselves and useful to the world. The greatest part of our British youth lose their figure, and grow out of fashion, by that time they are five and twenty. As soon as the natural gaiety and amiableness of the young man wears off, they have nothing left to recommend them, but
lie by
the rest of their lives among the lumber and refuse of the species. It sometimes happens, indeed, that for want of applying themselves in due time to the pursuit of knowledge, they take up a book in their declining years, and grow very hopeful scholars by the time they are threescore. I must therefore earnestly press my readers, who are in the flower of their youth, to labour at those accomplishments which may set off their persons when their bloom is gone, and to
lay in
timely provisions for manhood and old age. In short, I would advise the youth of fifteen to be dressing up every day the man of fifty, or to consider how to make himself venerable at threescore.
Young men, who are naturally ambitious, would do well to observe how the greatest men of antiquity made it their ambition to excel all their contemporaries in knowledge. Julius Cæsar and Alexander, the most celebrated instances of human greatness, took a particular care to distinguish themselves by their skill in the arts and sciences. We have still extant several remains of the former, which justify the character given of him by the learned men of his own age. As for the latter, it is a known saying of his, that he was more obliged to Aristotle, who had instructed him, than to Philip, who had given him life and empire. There is a letter of his recorded by Plutarch and Aulus Gellius, which he wrote to Aristotle upon hearing that he had published those lectures he had given him in private. This letter was written in the following words, at a time when he was in the height of his Persian conquest: