In discoursing upon this subject, we imputed much of the present profligacy to the notorious want of care in parents in the education of youth, who, as my friend informs me, with very little school-learning, and not at all instructed (ne minime quidem imbuti) in any principles of religion, virtue, and morality, are brought to the great city, or sent to travel to other great cities abroad, before they are twenty years of age, where they become their own masters, and enervate both their bodies and minds with all sorts of diseases and vices before they are adult.
I shall conclude with a passage in Aristotle's Politics, lib. viii. cap. I. "[Greek text]" Which, for the sake of women, and those few gentlemen who do not understand Greek, I have rendered somewhat paraphrastically in the vernacular:—"No man can doubt but that the education of youth ought to be the principal care of every legislator; by the neglect of which, great mischief accrues to the civil polity in every city."
I am, while you write like an honest man and a good Christian, your hearty friend and well-wisher,
ABRAHAM ADAMS.
* * * * *
THE COVENT-GARDEN JOURNAL.
No. 10.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1752.
At nostri proavi Plautinos et numeros, et
Laudavere sales; nimium patienter utrumque,
Ne dicam stulte, mirati.