The works of Richard Hurd, volume 4 (of 8)

by Richard Hurd

TO ROBERT MOLESWORTH, ESQ.

Here I concluded my defence: when Mr. Locke, perceiving, by the attention we all paid to him, that we were now prepared to receive his answer, raised himself in his chair, and, with a firmer tone and look than I expected, addressed himself to me in the following manner.

MR. LOCKE.

Were the subject before us a matter of indifference or curiosity, such as idle men are used to discourse of, I could allow your lordship to pursue it in this way of Socratic raillery and declamation. But, if ever there was a question, that deserved the examination of a philosopher, properly so called, it is, surely, this of Education; and, among the various parts of it, none is more strictly to be inquired into, as none is, perhaps, so big with important consequences, as that which comes recommended to us under the specious name of Foreign Travel.

I could not, therefore, but wonder to hear your lordship enlarge so much, and so long, on I know not what varnish of manners and good breeding; of the knowledge of men and the world; of arts, languages, and other trappings and shewy appendages of education: just as if an architect should entertain you with a discourse on Festoons and Foliage, or the finishing of his Frize and Capitals, when you expected him to instruct you in what way to erect a solid edifice on firm walls and durable foundations.

What a reasonable man wants to know, is, the proper method of building up men: whereas your lordship seems solicitous for little more than tricking out a set of fine gentlemen. It seemed, indeed, as if your lordship had calculated your defence of travelling for a knot of Virtuosi, or a still more fashionable circle (where, doubtless, it would pass with much ease and without contradiction); and had, somehow, forgotten that your hearers are all plain men; one of them, an old one; and he too, as your Lordship loves to qualify him, a philosopher.

To speak my mind frankly, my Lord, your defence of foreign travel, as lively and plausible as it seemed, has no solid basis to rest upon. You tell us of many defects in the breeding of our English youth, and you would willingly redress them: but in what way this is best done, can never be known from vague and general declamation.

To make this inquiry to purpose, some certain principles must be laid down; some scheme of life and manners must be formed; some idea or model of the character, you would imprint on young minds, must be described; to which we may constantly refer, as we go along; and by which, as a rule, we may estimate the fitness and propriety of that sort of breeding, you would recommend to us.

Since your Lordship then will needs have me dictate to you on the subject of Education, I must have leave to do it in another way, and after a more solemn manner, than you perhaps expect from me in this freedom of conversation.

I begin with this certain principle: That the business of education is to form the Understanding, and regulate the Heart. If man be a compound of Reason and Passion, the only proper discipline of his nature is that which accomplishes these two purposes.

So far we are, doubtless, agreed. But the subject requires a more particular application of this principle.

You have laboured with much plausibility to persuade us, That the only reasonable education is that which prepares and fits a man for the commerce of the world: and I readily admit the notion, provided we first agree about the meaning of this big word, the World. Your Lordship, it may be, in your sublime view of things, is projecting to make of your Pupil, what is called, in the widest sense of the term, a Citizen of the World. A great and awful character, my Lord! But let us advance by just degrees.

First, if you please, let us provide that he be a worthy citizen of England; and, by your favour, let me ennoble this small island of ours with the pompous appellation of the world. It is that world, at least, in which our adventurer is to play his part; and for the commerce of which it concerns him most immediately to be prepared.

Now, as your Lordship’s chief care is directed, very properly, towards its chief subjects; I mean, the men of rank and fortune, whose ample property and noble birth give their country the greatest concern in their education; let me ask in what manner they are likely to qualify themselves best for the important parts, they are to act in it?

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

Certainly, by acquiring that knowledge, and those accomplishments, that are most proper for the discharge of them.

MR. LOCKE.

Undoubtedly, my Lord: there cannot be two answers to so plain a question. As that education is, in general, the best which forms the man, in the best manner; so, in this confined view, that education must be thought the best, which forms the Englishman, in the best manner.

To proceed then on this reasonable concession.

An English citizen, or, if you will, Senator, (for this is the station to which our greater citizens do, and our best should aspire) can never acquit himself of the duties he owes his country, under this character, but by furnishing himself with all those qualities of the head and heart, which his superior rank and pretensions demand.

This last chapter is an important one; and would be very long, if justice were done to it. But a summary of the main articles, of which it consists, may be given in few words.

I require then in our young aspirant to the name and honours of an English Senator, that his mind be early and thoroughly seasoned with the principles of virtue and religion: that he be trained, by a strict discipline, to the command of his temper and passions: that his ambition be awakened, or rather directed, to its right object, the public good; and to that end, that his soul be fired with the love of excellence and true honour: above all, that he have a reverence for the legal constitution of his country, and a fervent affection for the great community to which he belongs.

Your Lordship has a due respect for these virtuous qualities of the Heart, which will give this consideration its full weight with you. But were they of no more account, than many institutors of youth seem disposed to reckon them, still there are other qualities, those of the Head, in every man’s account essentially requisite to the discharge of those offices, which our greater citizens are destined to sustain.

I require, therefore, in the next place, that our young Senator have a ready and familiar use, at least, of the Latin tongue (your Lordship, I know, will add, and of the Greek; but in this I am not so peremptory): that he be competently instructed in the elements of science, as well as what are called polite letters: that, especially, he be well grounded in the principles of morals, public and private; that he have made a thorough acquaintance with the history of his own country, and with its constitution, Civil and Ecclesiastical: that he have a general insight into the history of the world, ancient and modern: above all, that he have a well-exercised understanding; I mean, that he be taught to reason clearly and consequentially upon any subject: and, further, to put all these abilities to use, that he have a ready command of his own language, and the power of expressing himself, whether in writing or speaking, with ease and perspicuity, at least, if not with elegance.

Other ornamental qualities I omit for the present, which will almost come of themselves, if his education be rightly conducted; or may be acquired with little pains, and in the way of diversion only. But these solid accomplishments I hold it necessary for our youth of quality to possess, by the time in which they usually pass out of the hands of their Tutors and Governors, I mean the age of twenty-one.

Am I unreasonable in these demands? or can any thing less be dispensed with in a gentleman, who, by established custom, is to enter into the world at those years, and to bear a part in the public business and legislature of his country?

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

Without doubt, these accomplishments are no more than may be reasonably required in our young gentleman, or Senator. But how they are to be come at in our vulgar way of Education, I do not easily apprehend.

MR. LOCKE.

Of that, in due time. At present, you accept this as a reasonable idea or sketch of an English gentleman’s character; such as the course of his education ought to imprint upon him: and I shall now shew you very clearly that it is not possible to be attained in the way of foreign Travel.

Consider, first of all, the unavoidable WASTE OF TIME; of that time which is so precious in every view; not only as being the most proper for making the acquisitions, I speak of; but as being the only period of his life, which he will be at liberty to employ in that manner.

Early youth is flexible and docile: apt to take the impressions of virtue, and ready to admit the principles of knowledge. The faculties of the mind are then vigorous and alert: the conception quick, and the memory retentive. The humble drudgery of acquiring the elements of literature and science is to young minds an easy and a flattering employment. A submissive reverence for their teachers disposes them to proceed without reluctance in any path that is prescribed to them; and a springing emulation, joined to a conscious sense of gradual improvement, gives force and constancy to their pursuits. The objects of their application seem important; not only from the novelty of them, and the authority of those who have the direction of their studies, but chiefly perhaps from a confused sense of their value, much above what they would entertain, were they able to form a true and distinct judgment of them.

This, then, is the season for laying the foundations of knowledge and ability of every kind; and if you let it slip, without applying it carefully to those purposes, you will in vain lament the omission in riper years, when the cares or amusements of life afford little leisure for such pursuits, and less inclination.

There may have been some few examples of those, whose superior industry in advanced age has atoned for the defects of their education. But in general the man depends intirely on the boy; and he is all his life long, what the impressions, he received in his early years, have made him[41]. If therefore any considerable part of this precious season be wasted in foreign travel, I mean if it be actually not employed in the pursuits proper to it, this circumstance must needs be considered as an objection of great weight to that sort of education.

Your Lordship may consider, next, the DISSIPATION OF MIND attending on this itinerant education; while the scene is constantly changing; and new objects perpetually springing up before him, to solicit the admiration of our young traveller.

One of the greatest secrets in education is, to fix the attention of youth: a painful operation! which requires long use and a steady unremitting discipline; the very reverse of that roving, desultory habit, which is inseparable from the sort of life you would recommend. The young mind is naturally impatient of constraint: it hates to be confined for any time in the same track; and is flying out, at every turn, from the proper subject of its meditation. Instead of counteracting this native infirmity, you indulge and flatter it; till, by degrees, the mind loses its tone and vigour, and is utterly incapable of paying a due attention to any thing.

I insist the more on this consideration, because in acquiring the elements of learning it is of great importance that the learner proceed uniformly in the course on which he has entered. It may now and then be the privilege of a genius, to seize the principles of knowledge at once, and to grow wise, as we may say, by intuition. But the common sort of minds are of another make. It is by slow steps only that they arrive at knowledge; and, if you stop or divert their progress, their labour is all thrown away, or yields at best a shallow, superficial, and ill-digested learning.

But were no account to be had of the loss of time, or of this dissipated turn of mind, which is still more pernicious, I should nevertheless object to this travelled education, on account of the very objects to which our traveller’s APPLICATION is directed.

Instead of those necessary and fundamental parts of knowledge, which I require him to have laid in, his attention, so much of it as can be spared for any thing that looks like information, is wasted on things either frivolous or unimportant.

His first business is, to make himself perfect in the forms of breeding, which he finds in use among those he lives with, or perhaps in their forms of dress only.

His next concern is, to acquire a readiness in the languages of Europe; or, to shorten his labour as much as possible, at least in the French language. The pretence is, that he may fit himself for conversation with his foreign acquaintance; which takes up much time to little purpose, as the use ceases, in a good degree, with his return home: and, that he may qualify himself for perusing their best books; which takes him off from the study of those which are still better; in the learned languages, and I will venture to say, in his own.

If any thing further employ his attention, it is perhaps a little virtuosoship. He inquires after fine pictures, fine statues, fine buildings. He visits the shops of artificers; gets admission to libraries, cabinets of medals, and repositories of curiosities; and, for some relaxation from these arduous toils, is frequent at Churches, Theatres, and Courts of Judicature, and stares at processions, ceremonies, and other solemn shews.

And, now, when these three points have been duly attended to, I leave your Lordship to guess what leisure he is likely to have for accomplishing himself in those other studies, which you allow me to suppose are of much greater importance.

In one word, my Lord, if he acquires any knowledge, it is only, or chiefly, of such things as he may very well do without, or, at best, are of an inferior and subordinate consideration: while the branches of learning, he must neglect for these, are of the most constant use and necessity to him in the commerce of his whole life.

Till then your Lordship can find a way to reconcile these different pursuits, I must be of opinion that the boasted way of travel is the worst that can be contrived for the proper instruction of our young countrymen.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

Without doubt, if these less important points engross all their attention. But can there be a difficulty in carrying on the two designs together; especially, if a good and attentive tutor be at hand to direct his pupil’s pursuit and quicken his application?

MR. LOCKE.

Your Lordship, like the friends and parents of a young traveller, is for exacting wonders at the hands of this important personage, a tutor. But the truth is, so many, and so different things cannot be well learned, even with the advantage of the best parts under the very best direction.

Besides, your Lordship forgets that what we now inquire into, is, whether the generality of our English youth of quality should be educated in this form; not, whether two or three young men, of the most uncommon genius and application, may not possibly succeed in it. I demand an education, which may ordinarily produce useful and able men: your Lordship is providing only for, what comes of itself, a prodigy.

And now, my Lord, with this preparation, I think myself enabled to reply distinctly to the several arguments you alleged for the expediency of foreign travel. It is very clear, that the most solid advantages are lost by it. But perhaps we shall find a recompense for this loss, in the shewy and ornamental accomplishments, which travel promises; and which your Lordship supposes the world will readily, and with reason, accept instead of them.

These accomplishments are summed up in the BENEFITS of an enlarged society and conversation; which, again, branch out into many heads; and under different names, furnished, I think, the substance, as well as governed the method, of your vindication.

This was the polite and popular theme, which you chose to dress out in all the colours of your eloquence. To make way for these, and to lay them on with more effect, your Lordship was pleased to tell us a very melancholy story. England, it seems, is over-run with barbarism and ignorance; its inhabitants are rude and uncivilized; and nothing can be learnt among them, which is fit to appear in good company.

If this had been said of our forefathers in Cæsar’s time, or even in good King Edgar’s, when the land, they say, was over-run with wolves (by which, I suppose, the monkish mythology means men, as savage); I could have found but little, it may be, to oppose to the accusation. But at this time of the day, when arts and letters have at least made some progress among us; when commerce has extended our acquaintance with the rudest parts of the globe, and policy strengthened our connexions with the most civilized; when our country is filled with large flourishing towns, and even prides itself in a vast, opulent, and splendid metropolis; I could not but think the charge was a little aggravated, or that your Lordship had forgotten to speak of England, as it now subsists, in the close of the seventeenth century. It seemed to me as if the English might now, at least, deserve to be considered as men; and that in our courts and camps, if not in our colleges, we might stand a chance of finding what your Lordship would not disdain to qualify with the name of gentlemen.

But the other representation was more favourable to your Lordship’s cause: and out of that representation arose the several Barbarities, with which you thought fit to mortify and alarm us.

The first fire of your zeal is spent on that swarm of Prejudices, with which our English, or at least provincial, youth are commonly over-run.

Prejudices, my Lord, is an equivocal term; and may as well mean right opinions taken upon trust, and deeply rooted in the mind, as false and absurd opinions, so derived and grown into it.

The former of these will do no hurt; on the contrary, perhaps, the very best part of education is employed in the culture of them.

But admit, they are of the latter sort: still they may be only the excesses of right principles and notions. And in that case, I should doubt whether the evil be of consequence enough to deserve your indignation. Perhaps no man has enough of certain virtues, that does not carry them something too far. The just degree, the precise mean, is a nice point to hit. The condition of our common nature is such, that we either overshoot the mark, or fall short of it; and your Lordship easily apprehends which is the more convenient as well as more generous part, in this moral archery.

Besides, reflexion and experience will come in, soon enough to moderate these excesses. So that, for my part, though our young patriot should happen to entertain the extravagant conceit, you diverted yourself with, of the soil and climate of Old England, I should take that for no great objection to his home-breeding, and should, possibly, not be over-forward to disabuse him of such honest errors.

Surely, my Lord, there are certain associations of ideas, which, however oddly formed, your Lordship would be something loth to undo.

To take your own instance: What if the ideas of liberty chanced to be closely connected with those of Old England; so as, by the magic of this union, to convert her rude heaths and barren mountains into pleasurable landskips; would you be forward, if you had it in your power, to dissolve this charm, and, by setting those objects in their true and proper light, disenchant the mind, at the same time, from the idea, or warm love at least, of English liberty?

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

You know well, I perceive, how to chuse your instances. The force of this, you suppose, will hardly be lost on him, who professes himself an adorer of that liberty. But, under favour, I see no such inconvenience, as you suggest, in putting asunder two things which truth and nature had no hand in bringing together. Liberty has charms enough to attach the mind, wherever the place of her abode be; and I have never heard that the loveliness of her form is impaired, or even disgraced, by the homeliness of her habitation.

MR. LOCKE.

It may be so; and the reason, as in the case of the more selfish affections, is, That the habitation of our idol, whatever be our worship, is rarely thought homely. But convince us that our country is scarce worth contending for, and, as lovely as its Goddess Liberty may appear to enamoured eyes, the generality of her votaries will, I doubt, be something slack in her defence.

But, after all, an illustration must not be questioned at this rate. It is enough, that your Lordship sees I am not for discarding Principles, under the opprobrious name of Prejudices. The tender minds of youth are to be treated with indulgence. If they put forth too fast, and too luxuriantly, let the ordinary methods of culture be applied to them. A little dressing and pruning, at fit seasons, may do more good, than transplanting: a fatal experiment, in many cases; which, in checking the immoderate vigour of its growth, kills the tree, or, at best, brings on a languishing and dwarfish imbecillity.

If, indeed, by Prejudices you mean vicious principles, properly so called; that is, vicious in themselves, as well as in the degree: these, it is certain, must be rooted up; and the sooner, the better: but then there is no need of crossing the seas for the benefit of such an operation.

For the proper cure of such prejudices, as I take it, is to be made by the application of those truths that are common to all climes; not by the partial manners or opinions which arise out of them in this or that more polished society.

But your Lordship, I observed, as though you had taken up this charge of Prejudices purely to introduce the satire on Old England, was content to drop it, as soon as it had served your turn. You exchanged it, however, for another of more importance, THE LOW, SORDID, AND IMMORAL HABITS; which strike into the lives and manners of our youth, and are, as you conceive, epidemical and incurable in this Island.

It may be true, that too much of the complaint is well-founded. The taste of our provincial gentry may be something coarse; and their houses, none of the best schools of civility and politeness: so that low and even immoral habits may be, and, I doubt, too often are, the fruit of an ordinary domestic education. But then what remedy does your Lordship prescribe for the removal of them? Why, you send them abroad with all their imperfections upon their heads; to get rid of their bad habits, as they can, and to pick up better, as they will: or, do you perhaps imagine that the ill qualities, they take out with them, will drop off, of themselves? and that the good ones they stand in need of, like new leaves in the spring, will immediately put forth and take their places?

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

I do but imagine, that bad habits are only to be expelled by better; and that therefore the readiest way for our countrymen to get quit of their ill manners, is, to force them into good company. And, with your leave, I see nothing very absurd or unreasonable in this imagination.

MR. LOCKE.

Certainly not, in prescribing good habits as a cure for bad ones. But your Lordship had done well to shew what there is in a foreign air, that is so propitious to good habits, as that none but such can thrive in it; or, if there be a mixture of good and bad, as with us, how your traveller shall be secured against an ill choice. Otherwise our young spark may pick up new habits indeed; but they may only be different from what he took from home, not better or more reasonable.

I doubt, my Lord, that, when such rude and untutored boys find themselves removed from that restraint which the eye of a parent, though but little accustomed to civility himself, imposed upon them, they will rather give way to a freer indulgence of their own froward humours, than be in any disposition to check and reform them. What inclination will such persons have to benefit by good company? or how indeed will they gain admittance into it?

I appeal to your own observation, whether, when this sort of ill-educated people get abroad, and settle for a time in some frequented city, their usual way be not to keep at distance from the better company of the place, and to flock together into little knots and clubs of their own countrymen, or of such others as are most resembling in taste and manners to themselves; where all their low humours are freely indulged, and even inflamed, by the mutual society and countenance of one another. This, your Lordship knows, is most frequently the case; while the obsequious tutor is at length more likely to be swayed by the importunity, and perverted by the ill example, of his disciples, than they are to be restrained by his advice and authority.

But, though foreign travel should be indeed a remedy for the mischiefs, complained of, I still question whether it would be a proper one. Suppose our young gentleman to be of so pliant a make, as to lay aside his rustic and illiberal habits in complaisance to the better company, he is obliged to live with: does it immediately follow, that he will adopt none but what are fit for him to assume; and, with so raw and undiscerning a judgment as he carried out with him, that he will have the skill to select only and assume such manners as are most becoming and ornamental?

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

As if one needs be in any pain, on that head; when the habits, I spoke of, are not only different from those he must assume abroad, but the very reverse of them!

MR. LOCKE.

Alas, your Lordship is not to be told, that the reverse of wrong is not always right. Even in the instance your Lordship puts, a young man may be polished indeed out of his rusticity; yet, if he have no better rule to go by, than the fashion of the place where he lives, he may easily wear himself into the contrary defect, an effeminate and unmanly foppery. And, for the probability of such miscarriage, your Lordship is again referred to your own experience and observation.

As to what I take to be the proper remedy for these barbarities, that is another question, which I may afterwards find occasion to explain to you more at large. For the present, I must take leave to conclude, that, under the circumstances here supposed, foreign travel is generally an insufficient, always an improper, cure for them.

Your Lordship indeed goes further. You contend, that, if these sordid and dirty habits could by any means be expelled, still our English education is so essentially bad, that no liberal or graceful manners could be derived from it. And here your Lordship’s rhetoric expatiates in full security. You seem confident that, though a method might be found out for making reasonable men, yet our home-breeding is absolutely incapable of furnishing fine gentlemen.

On this occasion it was, that the servile discipline of our schools, and the pedant tutorage of our colleges, afforded ample scope to your resentment. From an over-charged picture of both these, your Lordship finds means to dress up such a prodigy of ill manners, as must be the scorn, or pity, of all good company: which, to move our pity, or our scorn the more, your Lordship, I remember, took care to contrast to the easy, the assured, the all-sufficient air of a finished traveller.

To this triumphant part of your harangue, I have only to oppose some plain and simple truths.

The awkward bashfulness of a young man is a sin which, I know, admits of no expiation, in good company. However, what good company will not pardon, it will soon remove. And, till that blessed time comes, let it first be considered that the modesty of ingenuous youth, though a terrible vice in itself, is yet favourable to some virtues. It is full of deference and respect; it preserves innocence; nourishes emulation; and, till reason be of age to take the rein into her hands, suspends and controuls all the passions. Nay, if it did nothing more than dispose a young man to observe much and talk little; even this advantage might be some recompence for the ill figure it gives him in the eyes of your Lordship’s good company.

Have a care, my Lord, lest by taking off this restraint too soon, you emancipate your favoured youth from every principle of honour, and let him run headlong into worthlessness, dissolution, and ruin!

I know what the world is ready to think of this talk. But a truce with the world. I am a Philosopher, your Lordship knows: nay, your Lordship, too, is a Philosopher. Let us for once then hazard an unfashionable truth, that modesty in a young man is his grace and ornament; and that a confident young booby, not a bashful one, is the prodigy that needs the expiation.

Consider, further, my Lord, that bashfulness is not so much the effect of an ill education, as the proper gift and provision of wise nature. Every stage of life has its own set of manners, that is suited to it, and best becomes it. Each is beautiful in its season; and you might as well quarrel with the child’s rattle, and advance him directly to the boy’s top and span-farthing, as expect from diffident youth the manly confidence of riper age.

Lamentable in the mean time, I am sensible, is the condition of my good Lady; who, especially if she be a mighty well-bred one, is perfectly shocked at the boy’s awkwardness, and calls out on the taylor, the dancing-master, the player, the travelled tutor, any body and every body, to relieve her from the pain of so disgraceful an object.

She should however be told, if a proper season and words soft enough could be found to convey the information, that the odious thing, which disturbs her so much, is one of nature’s signatures impressed on that age; that bashfulness is but the passage from one season of life to another; and that as the body is then the least graceful, when the limbs are making their last efforts and hastening to their just proportion, so the manners are the least easy and disengaged, when the mind, conscious and impatient of its imperfections, is stretching all its faculties to their full growth.

If I had the honour of her Ladyship’s ear, I might further add, for her comfort, that as to this over-whelming modesty, which muffles merit, the boy, if she have but patience, will presently outgrow it, as he does his cloaths; that when this cloak of shame has done its work of warming and invigorating his young virtue, it may safely be laid aside, or rather will drop off of itself; and that, as poor and sheepish a thing as master now is, he may turn out, in the end, as forward a spark as the best of them.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

Fye, Mr. Locke; what, my philosopher give into this gaiety! he, who reproached me just now for the way of raillery and declamation!

MR. LOCKE.

Your Lordship does well to upbraid me for treating in so light a manner what deserves, indeed, the most indignant reproof. For, what is this endeavour to quench ingenuous shame, but a blasphemous attempt to counteract the designs of Providence, and obliterate, by main force, one of the most natural, as well as most precious, distinctions of early youth? Modesty is the blush of budding reason and virtue: and if art could succeed in the preposterous project of forcing the fruit without the bud, not only this prime grace of the year would be lost, but the production itself, though it might be wondered at as a rarity, could never pretend to the flavour and ripeness of that which is of nature’s own growth.

In plain words, my Lord, modesty is the ornament of youth: and the earnest or rather the proper cause, of all that is excellent in riper age. It graces the boy, and, in due time, forms the man: whereas in suppressing this young virtue, you precipitate, indeed, a sort of manhood; which, yet, in effect, is only a perpetual boyism, or rather a portentous mixture of both states, without the virtues of either.

I am far from meaning by all this, and your Lordship will be as far from suspecting me to mean, that an easy unconstrained manner is not an amiable and agreeable thing. I am only for waiting the proper time of its appearance; which nature makes a little later than our impatient fancies are ready to prescribe to her.

Consider too this polite accomplishment, this supreme finishing of a well-formed character, can only be acquired, except in some extraordinary instances, by long incessant use and habit in conversation; which, besides the unfitness of the thing in other respects, would dissipate the young mind too much, and take it off from those other more important pursuits, which are proper to that age.

Nay, I might further say, and with much truth, that politeness, in your Lordship’s, at least the court-sense of the word, is not to be attained by the ablest men; and when it is attainable, would generally do hurt, I mean beyond a certain degree, to its possessors.

No very great man was ever what the world calls, perfectly polite. Men of that stamp cannot afford such attention to little things, as is necessary to form and complete that character.

And even to men of a common make, that excessive sedulity about grace and manner, which constitutes the essence of good-breeding, would be injurious; as it tends to cramp their faculties, effeminate the temper, and break that force and vigour of mind which is requisite in a man of business for the discharge of his duty, in this free country.

So that, for any thing I see, this exquisite ease of good breeding should be left to the ambition of still inferior spirits, of such indeed as are conscious to themselves of an incapacity for any other.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

The concession is gracious; and the danger, no doubt, alarming, lest our senators and men of business should be disabled for their high functions by an excess of good manners. Yet ’tis some consolation, that at present I see no symptoms of that enfeebling politeness among such of the ornaments of either house, as I have the honour to be acquainted with.

MR. LOCKE.

Your Lordship may divert yourself as you think fit, with an old man’s fears. But if this mode of travelling, which has taken so much with us since the peace[42], should continue for any time, the day may come but too soon, when these fancies of mine will be realized: when politeness shall be fatal to ability of every kind; and, at least in the higher ranks of life, when our countrymen shall be too well bred to be good for any thing.

And now, having ventured so far, shall I proceed one step further, and take to myself the privilege of an old man, to express my sense of this whole matter, a little unfashionably? The mighty value, that is set upon manners, comes, as I have already hinted, from a quarter, which, though it may imprint respect on a person of your Lordship’s age and gallantry, must not pretend to be so much considered by grey hairs. If you can forgive the liberty, I will then, at length, speak out, and say, They are the ladies, only, or chiefly, that have affixed such an idea of merit to this envied quality of good-breeding; and that, as appearances are thought to sway full enough with that delicate sex, they may perhaps have advanced the credit of it something higher than such an accomplishment deserves.

And when I further consider the mighty influence which these fair dispensers of reputation must needs have on our gallant and courtly youth, I cannot wonder that the mode of foreign travel is become so fashionable. Nay, I am half inclined to suppose, that, in this debate between us, I have rather your politeness to contend with, than your judgment: and that, if your Lordship would deal roundly with me, your answer on this occasion would be the same with HIS, who, (as I have heard you tell the story) being questioned by his friends why a person of his acknowledged sense and bravery would accept the challenge of a coxcomb, thought it vindication enough of himself to reply, “that, for the men, he could safely trust their judgment; but how should he appear, at night, before the maids of honour[43]?”

Whether I presume too much in this fancy, is not material. It is enough to say, that what there is of use or beauty in polite carriage will come of itself, with a little experience of the world and good company; and shall not, with my consent, be purchased at the expence of far better things.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

Nor with mine: for, with all the courtliness and gallantry you make me master of, I never intended by the good company, I mentioned with so much respect, either those foolish men, or women, who prefer the forward assurance of their boys to every other consideration. I only think that a reasonable attention to the manners of our noble youth is a matter of much consequence; as early impressions of this sort are necessary to fit them for the commerce of the world, from which alone they can hope to derive their best and most solid instruction: and your gaiety on the fair sex must not restrain me from agreeing with them, in this instance, that I see not how that world can be read and studied, as it ought to be, without travelling.

MR. LOCKE.

Yes; now your Lordship comes to an important point indeed. From the polish of manners, the least considerable, and the easiest to be attained of all the parts of good breeding, your Lordship, as I now remember, rose at once to a subject of real consequence, I mean, THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD; a science, as you well termed it, the most profound and useful. And if this MASTER-SCIENCE were to be acquired by means of early travel, our young gentleman should have my consent to shut up his books, and set forth on his adventures, directly.

But, good my Lord, consider with yourself the difficulty of this study; the ripeness of age and judgment necessary for entering upon it; much more, for making a real progress in it.

And why, as I before hinted, will your Lordship be so impatient to come at the end, without the means? Why, in such haste to build up men, when nature has allotted a season for their being boys?

Without doubt, if our youth could start up men, at once, armed at all points, as the fable has it, and thoroughly furnished for the business of life, we should gladly accept this benefit, and might then be content to overlook or suppress all the cares of education. But this is not the condition of humanity. Its improvements of every kind are slow and gradual. Time and attention form each; and it is only through the right application of preceding states, that we arrive, at length, at the maturity of human wisdom. Let the child and boy be allowed to perfect themselves in what belongs to those conditions, and it will then be time enough to provide for the manly character.

Reflect with yourself, my Lord. When the young unfurnished traveller is carried out into the world, with no principles to poize his conduct, no maxims to direct his judgment, what can be expected from this untimely enterprize? what, but fluctuating morals, and fortuitous deliberations? He has not so much as the idea of what constitutes man. How then should he obtain any real and useful knowledge of the human character?

If by a knowledge of the world, be only meant a knowledge of the external modes and customs of it, this, no doubt, were best acquired by surveying them as they present themselves in the various tribes and societies of mankind. But your Lordship means more than this: you understand a knowledge of a higher kind; such as respects the creature man, considered in his essential parts, his reason and his passions. This is a different kind of study, my Lord, from that other. Any one that has eyes, is qualified to observe the shapes and masks of men; but to penetrate their interior frame, to inspect their proper dispositions and characters, is the business of a well-informed and well-disciplined understanding.

Can your Lordship seriously expect that a young boy should comprehend the effect, which government, policy, institution, and other circumstances of life, have on the pliant reason of mankind? or that he should have the skill to disentangle the various folds and intricacies, in which their real characters lie involved, through the insidious and discordant working of the passions? He should surely know what truth and reason is, before he can derive any benefit to himself from the discourse of men: and he should have carefully watched the movements of his own heart, before he presume to analyze, as your Lordship expressed it, the characters of others.

You see, then, the unseasonableness and inutility of foreign travel, as to the case in hand, even on the supposition that our traveller were admitted into what is called, the best company. But how shall this privilege be obtained? In what country can it be thought that the politeness of eminent men will condescend to a free and intimate communication with boys, of whatever promising hopes, or illustrious quality? Certain slight and formal civilities, your Lordship knows, are the utmost that can be looked for; and are indeed the whole of what our ill-prepared traveller is capable.

Your Lordship did well to remind me of such societies as those in which you and I have, at times, been engaged. The recollection is, of course, flattering and agreeable. But let us presume upon ourselves, my Lord; the Limborchs and Le Clercs are not so obvious to every body, as they were to us; or, if they were, every body would not profit so well by them. And if private scholars be thus inaccessible, how shall we think to intrude on the business and occupations of experienced magistrates and ministers? And, putting both these out of the question, who remain for the tutorage and instruction of these travelled boys, but such raw, unaccomplished companions, as they left at home, and may find every where in abundance?

Still my objections go further. What if, by uncommon sagacity and good luck, some acquaintance be made with superior persons, and some little insight at length be gained into their real characters? Of what mighty advantage will this be in life, when their business lies amongst other men; and when the same industry and attention had brought them acquainted with the characters of those, they must act and live with? Foreigners are neither an easier study than our own countrymen, nor a more useful one. The very modes and forms of external breeding catch the attention of unexperienced youth; and are so many obstacles to their real progress in this science. And, when all is done, the modifications of the human character, as existing at home, and exhibited in the lives and actions of their fellow-citizens, are, as I said, the proper objects of their curiosity.

In short, the utmost I can allow to this discipline of foreign travel, under the idea of its furnishing a knowledge of the world, is, That it may possibly wear a young man into some studied and apish resemblance of the models, he copies from, in his deportment and manners; or that the various scenes, he has passed through, may furnish matter, at his return, for much unprofitable babble in conversation: but, that he should come back fraught with any solid information concerning men and things, such as, in your Lordship’s sublime phrase, may fit him to appear with lustre in the court or senate of his own country, is what I can never promise myself from this fashionable mode of education.

I am even disposed to promise myself the less from it, for an observation, I have sometimes had the opportunity of making.

An old man has so little about him to provoke envy, that he may be allowed to make the best of his former successes. And though I pride myself in one, of a very delicate nature, the boast of it will not be ill taken even there, where your Lordship, with all your pretensions, would be heard with no patience. In short, I indulge myself in the vanity of saying that I have, in my time, been well with the fair sex, and have even been countenanced so far as to be admitted into a degree of acquaintance and familiarity with some ladies of the highest quality and distinction. And of these, I have constantly observed, that, though bred up at home, they had a manifest advantage over their travelled brothers, I was going to say, in learning and science, but certainly in true politeness, good sense, and even a knowledge of the world.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

I understand this civility to the ladies, as a decent atonement for your late freedoms with them. In this light I should be unwilling to cavil at it: and yet I see not, how your high encomiums on the superior good sense and politeness of these home-bred ladies can consist with the passion, you before censured in them, for foreign travel, as favourable, in their opinion, to the production of such virtues.

MR. LOCKE.

My consistency in this representation, I doubt, is less questionable, than my civility. For the ladies, on whom I bestowed those high, but just encomiums, were chiefly such as I had known in my younger days, before the passion for travel had got among them. Now indeed the case is altering apace, and the effects are answerable. The virtues of the English ladies, when they staid at home, were more conspicuous than those of our travelled gentlemen. Now that they, too, begin to travel, their follies are, also, more glaring: in either case, I am willing to own, for the credit of my civility, from the same reason, that both good and ill qualities strike us most, when set in the precious metal of that sex.

However, from the whole of my experience, I must needs conclude, that this finishing of a travelled education only serves to corrupt good qualities, or inflame bad ones.

But the ladies are not in my province. If they were, a knowledge of the world is not the leading virtue I might wish to see them possessed of. In the men, I confess, this accomplishment is of more importance; and I am therefore solicitous, that no well-meaning youth, whom it so much concerns to gain a knowledge of the world, should be misled in his search of it.

Seriously, my Lord, the WORLD, which I am forced to repeat so often, is a solemn word, and the study of it has an air of something plausible and imposing. But those, who know what the world is, will think it best that a young man begin with what is the first and last concern of every man, the study of himself; and if, in due time, he come to understand, and, still more, to value as they deserve, the characters of the great and good men of his own country, the opprobrious name of home-bred will not hinder him from acquiring the best fruit, with which a knowledge of the world, rightly understood, can furnish him.

For, my Lord, I must not, on so inviting an occasion as this, conceal an odd fancy of mine from your Lordship.

The affair of knowing the world, about which weak and fantastic people make so much noise, and which one hears them perpetually insisting upon with so much sufficiency, is of all others the nicest and most momentous step that is made in education. And, though volumes have been written to teach us how we may best become scholars, orators, courtiers, what not; yet not one leaf do I ever remember to have seen, composed by any capable man, that instructs us in the proper way of getting into this great secret.

It is not a matter to be entered upon, if I were vain enough to think myself capable of it, in this casual conversation; but thus much I may presume to say, that whoever designs to let a young man into a safe and useful knowledge of the world, must do it in a way very remote from that which has hitherto been taken.

A young man, they tell us, must know the world; therefore, say they, push him into it at once, that he may acquire that knowledge, which his own experience, and not another’s, must procure for him.

I, on the other hand, take upon me to say, Therefore keep him out of that world, as long as you can; and when you commit him to it, let the ablest friend or tutor lend him his best experience, to conduct him gradually, cautiously, imperceptibly, into an acquaintance with it.

You ask the reason of this mysterious procedure; yet methinks it should be obvious enough. From sixteen to one and twenty (a period, in which the cares of an ordinary education cease, or are much relaxed) is that precise season of life, which requires all the attention of the most vigilant, and all the address of the wisest, governor. The passions are then opening; curiosity awake; and the young mind ready to take its ply from the seducements of fashion, and creditable example.

Nor is this the worst. An education, that deserves the name, has inculcated maxims of honour and probity; has inspired the noblest sentiments of moral duty; has impressed on the mind a veneration for all the virtues, and an equal horror for all the vices, of humanity.

Full of these sublime ideas, which his parents, his tutors, his books, and even his own ingenuous heart has rendered familiar to him, the fatal time is at hand, when our well-instructed youth is now to make his entrance into the world: but, good God, what a world! not that which he has so long read, or dreamt of; but a world, new, strange, and inconsistent with all his former notions and expectations.

He enters this scene with awe; and contemplates it with astonishment. Vice, he sees assured, prosperous, and triumphant; virtue discountenanced, unsuccessful, and degraded. He joins the first croud, that presents itself to him: a loud laugh arises; and the edge of their ridicule is turned on sobriety, industry, honesty, generosity, or some other of those qualities, he has hitherto been most fond of.

He quits this clamorous set with disdain; and is glad to unite himself with another, better dressed, better mannered, in all respects more specious and attractive. His simplicity makes him for some time the dupe of this plausible society: but their occasional hints, their negligent sarcasms, their sallies of wit, and polite raillery on all that he has been accustomed to hold sacred, shew him at last that he has only changed his company, not mended it.

This discovery leads him to another. He attends to the lives of these well-bred people, and finds them of a piece with their manners and conversation; shewy indeed, and, on first view, decorous; but, in effect, deformed by every impotent and selfish passion; wasted in sloth and luxury; in ruinous play; criminal intrigues; or, at best, unprofitable amusements.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

This painting, methinks, is a little strong. Besides, you might surely have provided better company for your young inspector of the world, than that shameless crew, or this corrupt one.

MR. LOCKE.

I take up, as he must do, with such company as the world is most apt to throw in our way; and the colouring, your Lordship knows, is modest enough for the occasion.

But I attend our boy-adventurer no further in his progress into the world, and return now to ask you, what effect your Lordship thinks these strange unexpected scenes must naturally have upon him? Certainly one or the other of these two; either that the scorn of virtue, he every where observes, will by degrees abate his his reverence of it, and at length obliterate all the better impressions of his education; or, if these should still keep their hold of his young ingenuous breast, that he will entertain the most indignant sentiments of mankind, and suffer himself to be carried by them into a sour and sullen misanthropy, at least; perhaps into a sceptical and prophane impiety.

I have seldom known a young man of sense and parts, educated in this way, escape from one or other of these mischiefs.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

But why then bring him up with those high notions of mankind, of which the world must presently disabuse him, at the expence either of his innocence, or good nature?

MR. LOCKE.

That question had been natural enough from most men. But your Lordship knows very well, that, in this moral discipline, as in every other, ideas of excellence are to be imprinted on the young mind, and the most consummate models proposed for imitation: on this certain principle, That, whoever would be moderately accomplished in any art, and most of all in this supreme art of life, must take his aim high, and aspire to absolute perfection. A painter or statuary of the lowest form, your Lordship knows, is taught to work after a Madonna of Raphael, or a Venus of Medicis; yet is not likely to meet with either, among his acquaintance.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

The observation is surely just; and I could only mean that those high fancies should be checked and moderated in due time, before our entrance into that world, which, it is foreseen, will so little correspond to them.

MR. LOCKE.

And what is that due time, your Lordship sets apart for this delicate operation?

Is it, before the young boy commences his travels? But that, according to your Lordship’s scheme, is so early, that the regimen, you would now abate, has not taken its full effect, and his weak unconfirmed virtue would die under the experiment.

Is it then, when his travels are already begun? And is the sage tutor, your Lordship anxiously flies to, as to some god, on every occasion of distress, to charge himself with the solution of this difficulty? Alas! now it is too late. You have brought the boy into the scene. He will see and judge for himself. The torrent bears him away: the instant impression is too strong to be counteracted by the feeble and, now, disgusting admonitions of a tutor.

See then, if the proper way, to secure him from these inconveniences, be not, To keep him yet at a distance from the world; and, when you let him into some knowledge of it, to do it seasonably, gradually, and circumspectly: to take the veil off from some parts, and leave it still upon others; to paint what he does not see, and to hint at more than you paint: to confine him, at first, to the best company, and prepare him to make allowances even for the best: to preserve in his breast the love of excellence, and encourage in him the generous sentiments, he has so largely imbibed, and so perfectly relishes: yet temper, if you can, his zeal with candour; insinuate to him the prerogative of such a virtue, as his, so early formed, and so happily cultivated; and bend his reluctant spirit to some aptness of pity towards the ill-instructed and the vicious: by degrees to open to him the real condition of that world, to which he is approaching; yet so as to present to him, at the same time, the certain inevitable misery of conforming to it: last of all, to shew him some examples of that vice, which he must learn to bear in others, though detest in himself; to watch the effect these examples have upon him; and, as you find his dispositions incline, to fortify his abhorrence of vice, or excite his commiseration of the vicious: in a word (for I am not now directing a tutor, but suggesting, in very general terms, my ideas of his office) to inform the minds of youth with such gradual intelligence, as may prepare them to see the world without surprize, and live in it without danger.

This is that important chapter, which I presumed to say no institutor of youth had yet composed, or so much as touched upon, in a treatise of education. You will learn from this brief summary of its contents, what, in my opinion, should be the employment of those precious years, which are usually thrown away upon foreign travel.

In earnest, my Lord, there is a fatal mistake in this matter. People speak of a knowledge of the world, as what may be acquired at any time, and, for its importance, cannot be acquired too soon. Alas! they forget, that a long and careful preparation is necessary, before we are qualified so much as to enter on this task; and that they, who are latest in setting out, will arrive the soonest, certainly the safest, at their journey’s end.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

But where shall this mighty work of preparation be carried on? And in what privileged sanctuary shall our good young man be kept from the sight and contagion of this wicked world, and yet be gradually forming for the use and practice of it?

MR. LOCKE.

Where, does your Lordship ask? Why, in his college; in a friend’s, or his father’s house; any where, in short, rather than in a foreign country, where every wholesome restraint is taken off, and the young mind left a prey to every ill impression.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

And are there no inconveniences, on the other hand, which a provident parent may be supposed to foresee, and may be willing to guard against?

MR. LOCKE.

I understand your Lordship. I know, that, for want of better arguments in support of this foreign breeding, weak or unworthy parents are ready to take up with such as these:

They tell us, especially if of rank and quality, that their children have suffered more than enough already, in their passage through our public and vulgar schools; that, together with many illiberal habits, they have contracted many low and illiberal friendships, which are, in all reason, to be shaken off; that these unworthy companions follow them to the University, and are, if not the bane, yet the dishonour and incumbrance of their future lives; that an absence of some years abroad loosens these hasty and ill-timed connexions; and leaves them, on their return, at full liberty to contract others, more suitable to their birth and quality, and more conducive to their views of fortune, as well as of reputation, in the world; that indeed they might remove the young man immediately from his school into their own house; but that much of their time is necessarily spent in the metropolis, the licence of which is not to be guarded against by any care of their own, or of the best governor; that his low illiberal acquaintance would haunt him even there; at least, that the youth of his own age and rank would naturally flock about him, and, under a thousand pretences of civility or amusement, engage him in all the follies, and perhaps the vices, of this great town; that, on the whole, his only refuge from these mischiefs is in the way of foreign travel; whence, at length, he may return in riper age and with better judgement to take his station in the world.

To this popular talk (which your Lordship, I suppose, glanced at, but would not condescend to enforce directly) it is enough to reply, that part of the inconveniences, here enumerated, are feigned at pleasure, and the rest exaggerated; that the authority of a father, if he deserve that name, in concurrence with honest friends and an ordinary governor, will prevent them all, or at least palliate them; and that, to take matters at the worst, his son will be exposed to still greater inconveniences any where else. But in truth I cannot see, if a college be excepted against, and the business be to see the world, as it is called, why London should not be esteemed as fit a scene for the purpose, as any other great town in Europe. I think it contains as much good company as any other; and I doubt whether it be more licentious; or, if it be, there are three restraints upon it, which, I am sure, will not be found abroad: I mean, “the parental authority;” “domestic government;” and “a regard to reputation, under the eye and notice of his friends.”

So that, in every view, whether on your Lordship’s plan, of entering directly on the great study of the world, or on mine, of only preparing for it, our young man cannot possibly do better, at his years, than stay at home; where, if your Lordship please, we will then leave him; at least, till we have tried the force of your next, and, as I remember, LAST argument in behalf of foreign travel, “which arose out of the mighty benefits, supposed to attend the study and cultivation of what are called the FINE ARTS; in short, from the lustre and importance of the virtuoso character.”

Your Lordship, who has so acknowledged a taste in these things, and of course has so exquisite a sense of their value, may be excused for enlarging so particularly on this head. But to me, who am of a plainer make and cooler disposition, they appear, if not frivolous, yet of little importance, when compared with those other things, which are the proper and more immediate objects of education.

It would, I doubt, disgust your Lordship, should I speak my mind freely of them; or even insinuate, that I take these studies, when entered upon in early youth, and proposed as matters of serious pursuit and application, to have indeed the most pernicious tendency; as breaking the nerves and force of the mind, and inspiring I know not what of a trifling and superfluous vanity.

To render these pursuits serviceable in any degree, or even harmless, they should in all reason be postponed to riper years, when the confirmed judgment will of course take them but for what they are, for nothing more than elegant and polite amusements.

Not to insist, that to excel in this species of taste, as in all others, a previous foundation is required, of reflexion and good sense: for I agree with your favourite poet; of every polite study and indulgence even of the imagination,

Sapere, est et principium et fons.

These and still stronger objections might be made to your partiality for the fine arts. But I am contented to wave them all; as indeed they would come with an ill grace from one, who must acknowledge himself to have no particular skill or discernment in them, and who should not therefore presume to enter the lists with so consummate a master of them as your Lordship.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

And so, under the cover of a civil speech, you escape from the most specious, at least, of those arguments, which are alleged in favour of an early travelled education. For, whether it be true, or no, that other accomplishments may be as well acquired at home, it is past a doubt that the polite and liberal arts can only be learnt abroad. And of their use and ornament to our noble youth—

MR. LOCKE.

Your Lordship, I know, can say more, and finer things, than you expect I should seriously dispute with you, on this occasion.

I have now, my Lord, (at least if my old memory has not betrayed me) gone over the several heads and topics of your defence; and said enough, I believe, on each, to shew that foreign travel is not, on whatever side we view it, the most proper method of a young gentleman’s education.

The benefits, you propose by it, are either of small account in themselves, at least of much less account than those you must sacrifice to them; or, when their importance is real and confessed, may be attained more conveniently in some other way, and at some other season.

For, after all I have said, your Lordship is not to conclude that I am wholly bent against the practice of foreign travel. I am as sensible, as any man, of its important use, when undertaken at a proper time and by fit persons. For, though I esteem it idleness, and something worse, for a young boy to waste his prime and most precious years in sauntering round Europe, yet I know what ends of wisdom and of virtue may be answered by a capable man’s survey of it.

But then, my Lord, I reckon that capacity at no vulgar rate. He must be of worth and consideration enough to be received into the wisest, nay the greatest company. His natural insight into men and things must be quick and penetrating. His faculties must all be at their height; his studies matured; and his reading and observation extensive. With these accomplishments, if a man of rank and fortune can find leisure to employ a few years among the neighbouring nations, I readily agree, his voyage may turn out to his own benefit, and to that of his country.

In this way it may be true, as your Lordship insisted, that our island prejudices will be usefully worn off, and much real civility and politeness be imported among us.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

I thank you for this concession. Although I cannot yet be convinced of the total impropriety of an earlier voyage, I am pleased to find you do not interdict the thing itself. Many wise persons among us have even talked at that rate. But you are more reasonable; and indeed that extravagance was not to be apprehended from your true sense and superior knowledge of human nature.

MR. LOCKE.

I have that esteem of your Lordship’s kind opinion, as to be very unwilling to forfeit any share of it. Yet what I have now to advance will, I readily foresee, expose me to some risk, in that particular.

For now your Lordship has expressed your regard for a superior knowledge of human nature, it emboldens me to add that such knowledge (which I have small right to claim to myself) is not to be acquired but by the largest and most extensive observation of the human species: so that I may be found at last even a warmer advocate for the uses of foreign travel, than your Lordship.

I hold then that the knowledge of human nature (the only knowledge, in the largest sense of the expression, deserving a wise man’s regard) can never be well attained but by seeing it under all its appearances; I mean, not merely, or chiefly, in that fair and well-dressed form it wears amid the arts and embellishments of our western world; but in its naked simplicity, and even deformities; nay, under all its disguises and distortions, arising from absurd governments and monstrous religions, in every distant region and quarter of the globe.

The subject appears to me of that importance, that it almost warms me, an old philosopher as I am, into some emulation of your Lordship’s enthusiasm.

I would say then, “that, to study HUMAN NATURE to purpose, a traveller must enlarge his circuit beyond the bounds of Europe. He must go, and catch her undressed, nay quite naked, in North-America, and at the Cape of Good Hope. He may then examine how she appears crampt, contracted, and buttoned up close in the strait tunic of law and custom, as in China and Japan: or, spread out and enlarged above her common size, in the loose and flowing robe of enthusiasm, among the Arabs and Saracens: or, lastly, as she flutters in the old rags of worn-out policy and civil government, and almost ready to run back naked to the deserts, as on the Mediterranean coast of Africa.”

These, my Lord, are the proper scenes for the philosopher, for the citizen of the world, to expatiate in. The tour of Europe is a paltry thing: a tame, uniform, unvaried prospect: which affords nothing but the same polished manners and artificial policies, scarcely diversified enough to take, or merit, our attention.

It is from a wider and more extensive view of mankind that a just estimate is to be made of the powers of human nature. Hence we collect what its genuine faculties are: what ideas and principles, or if any, are truly innate and essential to it; and what changes and modification it is susceptible of from law and custom.

If you think I impose too great a task on our inquisitive traveller, my next advice is, That he stay at home: read Europe in the mirror of his own country, which but too eagerly reflects and flatters every state that dances before its surface; and, for the rest, take up with the best information he can get from the books and narratives of the best voyagers.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

That is, you discourage him from looking abroad into the world of reason and civility, the most natural state of mankind; and require him to waste his time and observation on slaves, madmen, or savages; states, in which reason and civility have no place, and where humanity itself, almost, disappears.

Admirable advice this, to come from a philosopher! and still better, to send your disciple to take his information of this unnatural disordered scene from the lying accounts of ignorant, ill-instructed, and gaping tale-tellers!

MR. LOCKE.

I was afraid, I should not be able to secure to myself the good opinion, which your Lordship was pleased to express of my knowledge of human nature. This mortifying experience puts an end to my adventurous flights, at once; and forces me back again into the narrower walk, which your Lordship seems willing to prescribe to me.

Be it then, as you insist, that an English gentleman’s care should be, to accomplish himself in the school of reason and civility; to fit himself, in short, for that state which your Lordship dignifies with the name of natural. Still I declare against his European travels.

The manners of each state are peculiar to itself, and best adapted to it. The civility, that prevails in some places on the continent, may be more studied and exquisite than ours; but not therefore to be preferred before it. Those refinements have had their birth from correspondent policies; to which they are well suited, and from which they receive their whole value. In the more absolute monarchies of Europe, all are courtiers. In our freer monarchy, all should be citizens. Let then the arts of address and insinuation flourish in France. Without them, what merit can pretend to success, what talents open the way to favour and distinction? But let a manlier character prevail here. We have a prince to serve, not to flatter: we have a country to embrace, not a court to adore: we have, in a word, objects to pursue, and interests to promote, from the care of which our finer neighbours are happily disburthened.

Let our countrymen then be indulged in the plainness, nay, the roughness of their manners: but let them atone for this defect, by their useful sense, their superior knowledge, their public spirit, and, above all, by their unpolished integrity.

Would your Lordship’s favourite Athens have done wisely (or rather did it do so?) to exchange the simplicity and manly freedom of its ancient character, for the fopperies and prostrations of the Asiatic courts? Nay, would the softer accomplishments of Athens, in its best state, have done well in a citizen of Sparta?

Your Lordship sees what to conclude from these hints. For my own part, my Lord, I esteem politeness, in the reasonable sense of the word, as the ornament, nay more, as the duty of humanity. But, under colour of making this valuable acquisition, let no culture of the human mind, no instruction in letters and business, no discipline of the passions, no improvements of the head and heart, be neglected. Let the foundation of these essential virtues be laid deep in the usual forms of our public, if you will, or (as you know I had rather) in the way of a more attentive and moral, because private, education. Let the commerce of the world, in due time and under due regulation, succeed to this care; and your Lordship will find your young gentleman as fully accomplished in all respects as, in reason, you should wish to see him. And for proof of it, if I were not restrained, by a common and perhaps false delicacy, from bringing the names of our friends and acquaintance into example in conversation, how many instances of this sort could I point to, in such men as your Lordship has known in your own country, and is most disposed to reverence; and some of them, possibly, in your own family!

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

Rather tell me, how we may reasonably expect to see such models produced, according to the vulgar way of our home-breeding: that one or two such may, perhaps, after strict search, be found among ourselves, I shall not dispute with you.

MR. LOCKE.

The search would cost me small pains. But I press the matter no further. It is enough that your Lordship sees I have my eye on some, the most estimable, nay the most accomplished characters, that have been formed among ourselves: and that even so envied a thing, as a fine gentleman, has been fashioned on this side the water. But the rarity of the production, you think, makes against me, and shews there is no trusting to the stubborn soil and unfriendly climate of our country. You conclude, upon the whole, for the expediency of foreign travel, from the acknowledged defects of our authorized seats of learning; which, according to your Lordship’s idea and representation of them, are so degenerate and depraved, that nothing of worth and value can be reasonably expected from that quarter.

This, after all, is your main reason for advising a foreign education. Your spite is to our Universities; and, to bribe, or rather provoke me into the same quarrel, your Lordship did not forget to remind me of the little obligation, which I myself, who was trained in their discipline, have had to them.

I could assent, perhaps, to some part of this charge. It is certain, at least, that the prejudices, the bigotry, the false learning, and narrow principles, which have prevailed too much, and still prevail, in those famous seminaries, create an unfavourable opinion of them in the minds of many liberal and discerning persons. Nay, I will not disown to you, that I have at times been tempted myself to entertain, perhaps to express, some resentment against them. But we are always severe, generally unfair, judges in our own case. And, to say the truth, when the matter comes to be considered impartially and coolly, their faults, of whatever kind, will admit of much alleviation.

The Universities of England, your Lordship knows, had their rise in the barbarous ages. The views of their institutors were, accordingly, such as might be expected from men of their stamp, and in their circumstances.

These seminaries were more immediately consecrated to the service of the church; which is the less to be wondered at, as our statesmen, you know, were, at that time, churchmen. Hence the plan of studies, prescribed to the youth, would be such as was best adapted to the occasions of that class of men, in whose instruction the public was more directly interested.

Besides, the learning of that time was rude and barbarous; and, had their views been more enlarged, the founders of our colleges had it not in their power to provide for the encouragement of any other. The supreme accomplishment even of our men of business was little more than a readiness in the forms, and a dexterity in the quirks, of the canon law: and the pride of the most profound scholars lay in applying the subtleties of the Aristotelian philosophy to theologic and metaphysical questions; whence too much stress was evidently laid on logical exercises and scholastic disputations.

’Tis true, some few of our colleges were erected at a time, when something more light and knowledge had broke in upon us; I mean, during the progress of the Reformation. But the great object that filled all men’s minds being the dispute with the see of Rome, the principal circumstance that distinguishes these later foundations from the other is, that their statutes provide more especially for the management of that controversy. So that, even in these societies, the scholastic disputative genius still prevailed, to the exclusion of that more liberal plan of studies, which is fitted to all times, and would have suited better to the general purpose of these established seats of education.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

This account of the institution and genius of our English Universities may be easily credited, even from what we now see of them. But, though some causes may be assigned for the introduction of these barbarous plans of education, what reason can be given why they should be cherished in our days, or that men of sense should submit to them?

MR. LOCKE.

The reason is not far to seek. These barbarous plans of education had, we have seen, in former times, both their reason and their use. Bodies of men retain the character of their first institution very long; and, all things considered, I am inclined to think it not amiss that they do so. Universities and schools of learning, in particular, should not be in haste to exchange established principles and practices, which the best sense of former ages had introduced, for novel and untried pretensions. The reason is plain: their instructions would have small weight, and their discipline no stability, amid such easy and perpetual changes. They are, indeed, the depositaries of the public wisdom and virtue; and their business is, to inculcate both on the rising generation, upon the footing on which they are received and understood in the several countries where they are erected. Even if their local statutes laid them under no restraint, an easiness in departing from established rules were a levity not to be commended; and would, in the end, be unfavourable to truth itself, when at any time it should come, in its turn, to be entertained among them.

The truth is, my Lord, we are ready to consider these seminaries as schools of philosophy, strictly so called: whereas their proper character is that of schools of learning and education. Under this last idea, much of that bigotry and prejudice is to be looked for, and should be excused, which would rightly be objected to them under that other denomination.

Hence then, I conceive, a just apology may be made for the present condition of our Universities. If they have not, in all respects, corrected the vices of their original institution, let the influence and authority of such institution be pleaded in their excuse; and if certain inveterate errors in speculation (for I know your Lordship’s chief quarrel to them) not immediately connected with their institution, happen still to maintain their credit in those places, let it be considered that the general sense of the public should in all reason be expected to go before their profession and propagation even of right principles. Believe it, my Lord, as reason and sound philosophy make a progress among us, these bodies will gradually, though reluctantly indeed, reform themselves: and the service they will then render to truth will be the greater for the opposition they now make to it.

I have ventured to say, that this reformation will, in due time, come of itself. I think, it certainly will; as well in regard to the general plan of their studies, as their particular principles and opinions. Yet, in respect of the former at least, it might perhaps be something quickened by external application. I know the attempt is delicate and difficult; but it might possibly succeed, if carried on under cover of some still greater reformation; which seizes the mind with much force, turns it to a new bias, and makes it propitious to every thing that tends to the attainment of its principal object.

Such occasions do not present themselves every day. One such we have seen; but we missed the season. Whatever was fundamentally wrong in the constitution of the Universities, should have been set right in that great æra, when the church was reformed. The undertaking had been of a piece with the rest of that extraordinary work; and the opportunity was inviting. But whether the minds of men were then ripe for this other reformation, or whether there was indeed light enough in the nation at that time fully and properly to effect it, may not unreasonably, I know, be made a question with your Lordship.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

It is no question at all with me, whether any service of that kind was to be expected from those great dealers in church-work. Perhaps another and later æra may be pointed out, when the same office might, and should, have been undertaken by our political craftsmen.

MR. LOCKE.

Your Lordship means at the Revolution; and, as the generous principles of liberty, on which the Revolution was founded, had received but little countenance from the Universities, this consideration, you will say, afforded the best pretence for attempting their reformation. But wise men saw, that the credit which those learned bodies had drawn to themselves, and indeed deservedly, by their late conduct, notwithstanding their speculative systems and conclusions, was at that time too high, to suffer a rigorous inspection to be made into their statutes and constitutions: they saw, in that convulsion of the state, it would be impossible to carry on a design of this nature, without endangering the new settlement, or exposing it at least to many odious and inconvenient imputations: and they saw, besides, that the spirit of liberty, which had prevailed so far as to reform the state itself, would insensibly extend its influence to all subordinate societies.

In a word, the close and immediate connexion, which the Universities have with the church, made it natural and highly reasonable to expect that both should have shared the same fate at the Reformation: but the necessity was not so urgent, or so visible at least, that the Universities should be new-modelled, at the Revolution.

However, my Lord, what the wisdom of either age omitted, or was unable to do, time, and that desuetude which attends upon it, will gradually bring about; not to say, has in some measure accomplished. And, to take matters as they now are, the studies and discipline of the Universities are not without their use, and should not be too violently declaimed against and degraded.

The elements of literature are reasonably well taught in those places. At least, the familiarity, which men have with the learned languages (the proper foundation, as I dare say your Lordship holds, of all real learning and politeness) is very much owing to the lectures of our colleges. And, though I am sensible what exceptions are to be made in other respects, yet, on the whole, religion, and good morals, receive an advantage from their institutions, and the regularity of their discipline.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

Yes; their religion is intolerance; and their morals, servility. For, as to any freedom of manly thought, or the dignity of virtue—

MR. LOCKE.

You are ready to look for them any where else than in our English Universities.

Come on then, my Lord: have the goodness to point out to us those happier seminaries, where these and all other virtues are more successfully propagated.

But which way will your Lordship direct us to take, in this search? Shall we turn to the North of this country for those advantages, which we despair of finding in the South? Or, because the grossness of our island air may infect all parts alike, shall we shape our course to the Continent? And does your Lordship encourage us to look for some Athens amidst the Protestant states of Germany, in the Netherlands, or the Swiss Cantons?

These, I take it, are the only scenes which your Lordship can have in view; for, as high as their reputation may be in this respect, you would hardly advise the breeding of our English youth in the colleges of the Jesuits.

One word then, if you please, on these Protestant Universities on the Continent.

Your Lordship and I have had some experience of the state of literature and education in those places. Eminent and excellent men they surely have amongst them. But so, your Lordship will confess, have the Universities of England. If we do not readily find those who, at this day, may be opposed to a Limborch or a Le Clerc; yet it is not long since we had to boast of a Chillingworth, a Cudworth, and a Whichcot; all, men of manly thought, generous minds, and incomparable learning.

But the question is not, you know, of particular men, which such great bodies rarely want; but, of the general frame and constitution of learned societies, fit for the purposes of polite and liberal education.

Shall we say then, that the scattered tribes of students in a Dutch or Swiss town are likely to be better instructed, or better governed, than the young scholars in our colleges; or, that the good order, discipline, and sobriety of these places, is to be compared with the anarchy and licence of those other?

Your Lordship, I know, takes a pleasure to conceive of certain foreign academies, as of that ANCIENT one, where the students visited, without constraint, the schools of philosophers, and even bore a part in their free conferences and disputations: you even love to paint the noble youth to yourself, as of old, spatiating, at their leisure, in shady walks and porticos, and imbibing the principles of science as they drop upon them in the dews of Attic eloquence and politeness.

All this, my Lord, is very well: yet, setting aside a certain colouring of expression which takes and amuses the imagination, I see but little to admire in this picture; certainly not enough to make one regret the want of the original, and seriously to prefer this easy manner of breeding, to that stricter form which prevails in our own Universities: where the day begins and ends with religious offices: where the diligence of the youth is quickened and relieved, in turn, by stated hours of study and recreation: where temperance and sobriety are even convivial virtues; and the two extremes of a festive jollity and unsocial gloom are happily tempered by the decencies of a common table; where, in a word, the discipline of Spartan Halls and the civility of Athenian Banquets are, or may be, united.

Surely, my Lord, these wholesome regulations, with many others that might be mentioned, could we but strip them of the opprobrious name of collegiate and monastic, are of another use and value in education, than the lax unrestrained indulgence of foreign seminaries.

But, were there even no difference in this respect, as there is surely a great deal, are we to reckon for nothing the disparity of civil and religious constitutions?

Your Lordship, I dare say, will not suspect me of a bigoted adherence to any mere mode of civil or ecclesiastical regimen. But is it all one, whether a young boy, who is destined to be a subject to the crown, and a member of the church of England, be inured to the equality of republican governments, and of calvinistical churches? It may be well for men of confirmed age and ability to look into both; but would you train up your son in a way that is likely to indispose him, right or wrong, to the institutions of his own country?

Besides, are there fewer prejudices, think ye, in the men of other churches and governments, than our own? or, are their professors and institutors of youth more free from popular errors and blind attachments, though of a different sort, than the tutors and masters of education in our country?

Nay, consider with yourself, my Lord; is there not as much tyranny in the administration of some they call free states; and as much restraint and persecution in the principles of some they call free churches, as can fairly be charged on the monarchy or church of England?

So that what you could expect to gain by preferring these foreign schools of learning to your own, I cannot easily imagine. All that is worth acquiring in either, you have, at least, an equal chance to meet with at home: and what should be avoided, may, nay must, with more probability, be encountered abroad.

But your Lordship, perhaps, would confine your young traveller to no one seat of learning; and have it only in view to convey him hastily, under the wing of a tutor, through many a famous academy, without settling him in any. This, I must confess, is the way to keep clear of prejudices; but, whether any solid instruction, or just science either of men or things, is to be gathered from so cursory an education, your Lordship will do well to consider.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

You have done me the favour to imagine many projects and designs for me, which I was too dull to entertain in my own thoughts. But, if the education of a young man of rank and quality cannot be carried on without the assistance of academical instructors, I would much sooner trust him to the care of such as the more free and liberal genius of certain foreign Universities has formed, than submit him to the tutorage of those priestly guides, to whom our narrow and slavish institutions have consigned the province of education, in our own country.

MR. LOCKE.

Your Lordship now indeed speaks out very plainly. Your objection, then, is to Clergy-tutors; and you think it absurd and even pernicious to commit our noble and liberal youth to the care of churchmen. You would rather see them in lay-hands; in the hands of philosophers, properly so called; who, indifferent to every thing but pure truth and reason, are in no danger of imbibing wrong principles themselves, and are therefore under no temptation of instilling any such into the minds of their followers.

The thought is happy, my Lord; and, if a number of these philosophers could any where be found, I might be induced to fall into the project of employing such only in the province of education. But, the condition, in which truth and reason are now left, and seem likely to continue, in this world of ours, affords little room for such flattering expectations. An unprejudiced instructor, I doubt, is a rarity not to be met with, I do not say in our Universities, but even out of them: and, prejudices for prejudices, some persons may be apt to think those of a churchman as tolerable as of any other.

But, my Lord, having no particular bias on my own mind in favour of that order, and having something perhaps to resent from several individuals of it, it will not misbecome me to hazard a word or two, in its vindication.

You will permit me then to say, that I see no peculiar unfitness in the clergy for the office, they are called to, in this country, of superintending the business of education. The leisure they enjoy; the various learning and general studies, which that leisure enables them, and their profession obliges them, to pursue; and, lastly, the strictness of life and manners, or, if you will, the very decorum, which their character imposes upon them; these circumstances seem generally to have marked them out, as the properest persons to form the manners and cultivate the minds of youth, in all countries. In our own, that propriety strikes one the more, since their prejudices, of whatever kind, are but in common to them with other speculative and studious men; and since even their interest, rightly understood, and as seen by the best and wisest of themselves, (whatever may have been warmly and passionately said by some persons) is in no degree separate from that of the great community, to which they belong.

Yes, your Lordship will say, their hopes and views of preferment—

Yet, in this respect, they are but on a level with other men of most other professions; nay, with all men out of them, that aspire to rise, by their merits or the favour of their superiors, to any distinction in the world. And though we commonly say, that the clergy should be only animated by purer motives, yet you cannot expect, nay would not seriously wish, that they should be altogether insensible to such as these.

It is true, in countries where the clergy have a dependance on some foreign power, or where they have usurped an independent power to themselves, or where, lastly, the civil constitution is so ill defined that the privileges of the subject lie at the mercy of the prince; in each of these cases, the ambition of the clergy may be, and in fact has been, productive of many public mischiefs. But our Protestant clergy, who are in no foreign subjection, claim no independency, and fill their place in a system all whose parts are, now at least, exactly regulated by known laws, cannot, by their private ambition, disturb the general interest, and have no peculiar inducements to attempt it. And though particulars may sometimes, by their follies and indiscretions, dishonour themselves, yet the effect cannot be considerable, and certainly affords no good reason for taking the province of education, for which on so many accounts they are well qualified, out of their hands.

Your Lordship’s candour and equity will then, upon the whole, permit an obvious distinction to be made between the MEN and their PROFESSION. Too many of the sacred order, I confess, and am sorry for it, seem now to have their minds perverted by those principles, and heated by those passions, which do little credit to their function, or themselves; and are equally inconsistent with the genius of that religion they profess to teach, as they are unfriendly to that legal constitution both of church and state, which they have bound themselves to support. But their profession is little concerned in all this; and in a succession or two of these men (if the present set be, many of them, incorrigible) you may surely reckon upon all those prejudices and passions being worked off, which now administer the occasion of so much dislike to it.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

Well, but clergy-manners; will they, too, be worked off, with their other infirmities?

MR. LOCKE.

Perhaps, they may; if not, forgive them this one defect; at least, if it be their only one. But you do not mean, that the manners of the clergy, as such, are more offensive than those of other people. They are suited to their profession and way of life, from which they naturally result; and if the clergy have not that gloss upon them, which sets off the manners of finer men, they rarely disgust you with the affectation of it. But, after all, if persons of your Lordship’s quality and breeding would condescend to countenance them a little, they would, doubtless, brighten under your eye; and might come in time to reflect somewhat of that high polish, which glistens so much in the address and conversation of their betters.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

What transmutations they may undergo hereafter, and by what means, I am not curious to enquire. On this head, their candid apologist is at liberty to be as much in jest, or in earnest, as he thinks fit. But from what appears at present, I must take leave, in my turn, to think less reverendly, than He would have me, of our sacred instructors; and though I value some particular persons of the order, as much as any man, yet, till I see a greater change in the principles, temper, and manners of that body, than, I fear, is likely to come to pass in our days, I can have no very favourable sentiments of those rude, illiberal, and monkish seminaries, where such worthies preside.

MR. LOCKE.

Let us have patience, my Lord. I have not scrupled to confess to you, that much is, at present, amiss in those seminaries, and wants to be set right. But so, God knows, there is every where else. As our factions and parties both in religion and government die away, the Universities will become more reasonable; and as the general manners refine, they too will, of course, take a better air and polish. In a word, they may not lead the public taste or judgment; but, as I said, they will be sure to follow it.

And the happy period is not, perhaps, far off. For, now I have taken upon me to divine so much of the future condition of our Universities, let me paint to you more particularly what I conceive of their growing improvements; and, in a kind of prophetic strain, such as old age, they say, pretends to, and may be indulged in, delineate to you a faint prospect of those brighter days, which I see rising upon us.

“The TIME will come, my Lord, and I even assure myself it is at no great distance, when the Universities of England shall be as respectable, for the learning they teach, the principles they instil, and the morals they inculcate, as they are now contemptible, in your Lordship’s eye at least, on these several accounts.

“I see the day, when a scholastic theology shall give place to a rational divinity, conducted on the principles of sound criticism and well interpreted scripture: when their sums and systems shall fly before enlightened reason and sober speculation: when a fanciful, precarious, and hypothetic philosophy, shall desert their schools; and be replaced by real science, supporting itself on the sure grounds of experiment and cautious observation: when their physics shall be fact; their metaphysics, common sense; and their ethics, human nature.

“Do I flatter myself with fond imaginations, my Lord? Or is not the time at hand, when St. Paul shall lecture our divines, and not Calvin; our Bacons and Boyles expel Aristotle; Mr. Newton fill the chair of Des Cartes; and even your friend (if your Lordship can forgive the arrogance of placing himself by the side of such men) take the lead of Burgersdicius?

“Still, my Lord, my prophetic eye penetrates further. Amidst these improvements in real science, the languages shall be learnt for use, and not pedantry: Your Lordship’s admired ancients shall be respected, and not idolized: the forms of classic composition be emulated: and a set of men arise, even beneath the shade of our academic cloysters, that shall polish the taste, as well as advance the knowledge, of their country.

“Yet, I am but half way in the portraiture of my vision. The appointed lecturers of our youth, whom your Lordship loves to qualify with the name of bearded boys, shall adopt the manners of men; shall instruct with knowledge, and persuade with reason; shall be the first to explode slavish doctrines and narrow principles; shall draw respect to themselves, rather from the authority of their characters, than of their places; and, which is the first and last part of a good education, set the noble and ingenuous youth intrusted to their care, the brightest examples of diligence, sobriety, and virtue.

“Perhaps in those days, a freer commerce shall be opened with the world: the students of our colleges be ambitious of appearing in good company: and a general civility prevail, where your Lordship sees nothing, at present, but barbarism and rudeness.

“Nay, who knows but, in this different state of things, the arts themselves may gain admission into these seminaries; and even the exercises be taught there, which our noble youth are now sent to acquire on the Continent?

“Such, I persuade myself, if the presage of old experience may pass for any thing, is the happier scene which a little time shall disclose to your view, in our English Universities. What its duration may be, I cannot discover. Much will depend on the general manners, and the public encouragement. In the mean time, if any cloud rest upon it, it will not, I assure myself, arise immediately from within, but from the little, or, which is worse, the ill-directed favour, which the Great shall vouchsafe to shew to places, so qualified, and so deserving their protection.

“Yet, after all I have seen, or perhaps dreamt, as your Lordship may rather object to me, of the future flourishing estate of our Universities, and of their extreme fitness in all respects to answer the ends of their institution, I cannot be mistaken in one prediction, “that the mode of early Travel will still continue; perhaps its fury will increase; and our youth of quality be still sent abroad for their education, when every reason shall cease which your Lordship has now alleged in favour of that practice.”

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

This last prediction may, perhaps, be true; I mean, if those others should ever be accomplished. But as I have no great faith in modern prophecy, and see at present no symptoms of this coming age of gold, which your fancy has now presented to us, you must excuse me if these prophetic strains, as you termed them, have no great weight with me before their completion. Should that ever happen, I shall respect your foresight, at least; and rejoice extremely at an event, which, I shall then freely own, will leave my countrymen no excuse for their folly.

This, Sir, was the substance of what passed between us on the subject in question. Our other friends interposed, indeed, at times; but rarely, and in few words; and I have rather chosen to mix their occasional observations with our own, than perplex and lengthen this recital by a more punctilious exactness. Besides, I could not think it civil to introduce my friends upon the scene, only to shew them, as it were, for mutes; their politeness to us, who were principals in the debate, being such, as to restrain them from bearing any considerable part in it. Yet this way of relation would, no doubt, have given something more of life to the sketch I here send you; as their presence, you may believe, certainly did to the original conversation.

It is enough to say, that nothing more material, than what I have now related to you, passed on the occasion. For by this time the day was pretty well spent, and it was necessary for us to withdraw to our several engagements.

For myself, I leave you to guess the effect which our philosopher’s grave remonstrance left upon me. One thing you will think remarkable; that the part of arraigning the present state of things should fall to my share; while he, at an age that is naturally querulous and dissatisfied, was employed in defending it. Whether this be a proof of his wisdom, or good spirits, I pretend not to say. But it gave me a pleasure to hear the old man indulging himself in the prospect of better days, of which, as young as we are, and as warmly as we wish for them, you and I had always despaired.

LETTERS
ON
CHIVALRY AND ROMANCE.

LETTERS
ON
CHIVALRY AND ROMANCE:
SERVING TO ILLUSTRATE SOME
PASSAGES IN THE THIRD DIALOGUE.

Guarda, che mal fato
O giovenil vaghezza non ti meni
Al magazino de le ciancie, ab fuggi,
Fuggi quell incantato alloggiamento.
Quivi habitan le maghe, che incantande
Fan traveder, e traudir ciascuno.
Tasso.