establishes friendship and good-will so much as confident communication of concernments and affairs. Other kindnesses, without this, leave still some doubts; but when your son sees you open your mind to him, when he finds that you interest him in your affairs as things you are willing should, in their turn, come into his hands, he will be concerned for them as for his own, wait his season with patience, and love you in the mean time, who keep him not at the distance of a stranger. This will also make him see, that the enjoyment you have is not without care, which the more he is sensible of, the less will he envy you the possession, and the more think himself happy under the management of so favorable a friend, and so careful a father. There is scarce any young man of so little thought, or so void of sense, that would not be glad of a sure friend, that he might have recourse to, and freely consult on occasion. The reserved. ness and distance that fathers keep, often deprive their sons of that refuge which would be of more advantage to them than a hundred rebukes and chidings. Would your son engage in some frolic, or take a vagary, were it not much better he should do it with than without your knowledge? For since allowances for such things must be made to young men, the more you know of his intrigues and designs, the better will you be able to prevent great mischiefs; and, by letting him see what is like to follow, take the right way of prevailing with him to avoid less inconveniences. Would you have him open his heart to you, and ask your advice? You must begin to do so with him first, and by your carriage beget that confidence.

91. But whatever he consults you about, unless it lead to some fatal and irremediable mischief, be sure you advise only as a friend of more experience; but with your advice mingle nothing of command or authority, nor more than you would to your equal, or a stranger. That would be to drive him forever from any farther demanding, or receiving advantage from your counsel. You must consider that he is a young man, and has pleasures and fancies which you are passed. You must not expect his inclinations should be just as yours, nor that at twenty he should have the same thoughts you have at fifty. All that you can wish is, that since youth must have some liberty, some outleaps, they might be with the ingenuity of a son, and under the eye of a father, and then no very great harm can come of it. The way to obtain this, as I said before, is (according as you find him capable,) to talk with him about your affairs, propose matters to him familiarly, and ask his advice; and when he ever lights on the right follow it as his, and if it succeed well, let him have the commendation. This will not at all lessen your authority, but increase his love and esteem of you. Whilst you keep your estate, the staff will still be in your own hands, and your authority the surer, the more it is strengthened with confidence and kindness. For you have not that power you ought to have over him, till he comes to be more afraid of offending so good a friend than of losing some part of his future expectation.

I

92. Familiarity of discourse, if it can become a father to his son, may much more be condescended to by a tutor to his pupil. All their time together should not be spent in reading of lectures, and magisterially dictating to him what he is to observe and follow, hearing him in his turn, and using him to reason about what is proposed, will make the rules go down the easier, and sink the deeper, and will give him a liking to study and instruction, and he will then begin to value knowledge, when he sees that it enables him to discourse, and he finds

the pleasure and credit of bearing a part in the conversation, and of having his reasons sometimes approved and hearkened to. Particularly in morality, prudence, and breeding, cases should be put to him, and his judgment asked; this opens the understanding better than maxims, how well soever explained, and setfles the rules better in the memory for practice. This way lets things into the mind, which stick there and retain their evidence with them; whereas words at best are faint representations, being not so much as the true shadows of things, and are much sooner forgotten. He will better comprehend the foundations and measures of decency and justice, and have livelier and more lasting impressions of what he ought to do, by giving his opinion on cases proposed, and reasoning with his tutor on fit instances, than by giving a silent, negligent, sleepy audience to his tutor's lectures, and much more than by captious logical disputes, or set declamations of his own, upon any question. The one sets the thoughts upon wit, and false colors, and not upon truth; the other teaches fallacy, wrangling, and opiniatry, and they are both of them things that spoil the judgment, and put a man out of the way of right and fair reasoning, and therefore carefully to be avoided by one who would improve himself, and be acceptable to others.

REVERENCE.

93. When, by making your son sensible that he depends on you, and is in your power, you have established your authority, and by being inflexibly severe in your carriage to him, when obstinately persisting in any ill-natured trick which you have forbidden, especially lying, you have imprinted on his mind that awe which is necessary; and, on the other side, when (by permitting him the full liberty due to his age, and laying no restraint in your presence to those childish actions, and gayety of carriage which, whilst he is very young, are as necessary to him as meat or sleep,) you have reconciled him to your company, and made him sensible of your care and love of him by indulgence and tenderness, especially caressing him on all occasions wherein he does any thing well, and being kind to him, after a thousand fashions, suitable to his age, which nature teaches parents better than I can; when, I say, by these ways of tenderness and affection, which parents never want for their children, you have also planted in him a particular affection for you; he is then in the state you could desire, and you have formed in his mind that true reverence which is always afterwards carefully to be continued and maintained in both parts of it, love and fear, as the great principles whereby you will always have hold upon him to turn his mind to the ways of virtue and honor.

TEMPER.

94. When this foundation is once well laid, and you find this reverence begin to work in him, the next thing to be done is carefully to consider his temper and the particular constitution of his mind. Stubbornness, lying, and ill-natured actions, are not (as has been said,) to be permitted in him from the beginning, whatever his temper be; those seeds of vices are not to be suffered to take any root, but must be carefully weeded out as soon as ever they begin to show themselves in him; and your authority is to take place and influence his mind from the very dawning of any knowledge in him, that it may operate as a natural principle, whereof he never perceived the beginning, never knew that it was, or could be otherwise. By this, if the reverence he owes you be estab

lished early, it will always be sacred to him, and it will be as hard for him to resist it, as the principles of his nature.

95. Having thus very early set up your authority, and, by the gentler appli cations of it, shamed him out of what leads towards an immoral; habit as soon as you have observed it in him, (for I would by no means have chiding used, much less blows, till obstinacy and incorrigibleness make it absolutely necessary,) it will be fit to consider which way the natural make of his mind inclines him. Some men, by the unalterable frame of their constitutions, are stout, others timorous; some confident, others modest, tractable or obstinate, curious or careless, quick or slow. There are not more differences in men's faces, and the outward lineaments of their bodies, than there are in the makes and tempers of their minds, only there is this difference, that the distinguishing characters of the face, and the lineaments of the body, grow more plain and visible with time and age, but the peculiar physiognomy of the mind is most discernible in children before art and cunning have taught them to hide their deformities, and conceal their ill inclinations under a dissembled outside.

96. Begin, therefore, betimes nicely to observe your son's temper, and that when he is under least restraint, in his play, and as he thinks, out of your sight. See what are his predominant passions, and prevailing inclinations; whether he be fierce or mild, bold or bashful, compassionate or cruel, open or reserved, &c. For as these are different in him, so are your methods to be different, and your authority must hence take measures to apply itself different ways to him. These native propensities, these prevalences of constitution, are not to be cured by rules, or a direct contest; especially those of them that are the humbler and meaner sort, which proceed from fear and lowness of spirit; though with art they may be much mended, and turned to good purpose. But this be sure of, after all is done, the bias will always hang on that side where nature first placed it; and, if you carefully observe the characters of his mind now in the first scenes of his life, you will ever after be able to judge which way his thoughts lean, and what he aims at even hereafter, when, as he grows up, the plot thickens, and he puts on several shapes to act it.

DOMINION.

97. I told you before, that children love liberty, and therefore they should be brought to do the things that are fit for them, without feeling any restraint laid upon them. I now tell you they love something more, and that is dominion; and this is the first original of most vicious habits that are ordinary and natural. This love of power and dominion shows itself very early, and that in these two things.

98. 1. We see children (as soon almost as they are born, I am sure long before they can speak,) cry, grow peevish, sullen, and out of humor, for nothing but to have their wills. They would have their desires submitted to by others; they contend for a ready compliance from all about them, especially from those that stand near or beneath them in age or degree, as soon as they come to consider others with those distinctions.

99. 2. Another thing wherein they show their love of dominion, is their de sire to have things to be theirs; they would have property and possession, pleasing themselves with the power which that seems to give, and the right they thereby have to dispose of them as they please. He that has not observed these two humors working very betimes in children, has taken little

notice of their actions, and he who thinks that these two roots of almost all the injustice and contention that so disturb human life, are not early to be weeded out, and contrary habits introduced, neglects the proper season to lay the foundations of a good and worthy man. To do this, I imagine, these following things may somewhat conduce.

CRAVING.

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100. 1. That a child should never be suffered to have what he eraves, much less what he cries for, I had said, or so much as speaks for. But that being apt to be misunderstood and interpreted as if I meant a child should never speak to his parents for any thing, which will perhaps be thought to lay too great a curb on the minds of children, to the prejudice of that love and affection which should be between them and their parents, I shall explain myself a little more particularly. It is fit that they should have liberty to declare their wants to their parents, and that with all tenderness they should be hearkened to, and supplied at least whilst they are very little. But it is one thing to say, I am hungry; another to say, I would have roast-meat. Having declared their wants, their natural wants, the pain they feel from hunger, thirst, cold, or any other necessity of nature, it is the duty of their parents, and those about them, to relieve them; but children must leave it to the choice and ordering of their parents what they think properest for them, and how much, and must not be permitted to choose for themselves, and say, I would have wine, or white bread; the very naming of it should make them lose it.

101. That which parents should take care of here, is to distinguish between the wants of fancy and those of nature, which Horace has well taught them to do in this verse,

is

"Queis humana sibi doleat natura negatis."..

Those are truly natural wants, which reason alone, without some other help, not able to fence against nor keep from disturbing us. The pains of sickness and hurts, hunger, thirst, and cold, want of sleep and rest, or relaxation of the part wearied with labor, are what all men feel, and the best disposed mind can not but be sensible of their uneasiness, and therefore ought, by fit applications, to seek their removal, though not with impatience, or over-great haste, upon the first approaches of them, where delay does not threaten some irreparable harm. The pains that come from the necessities of nature, are monitors to us 'to beware of greater mischiefs, which they are the forerunners of, and therefore they must not be wholly neglected, nor strained too far. But yet, the more children can be inured to hardships of this kind, by a wise care to make them stronger in body and mind, the better it will be for them. I need not here give any caution to keep within the bounds of doing them good, and to take care that what children are made to suffer should neither break their spirits, nor injure their health, parents being but too apt of themselves to incline, more than they should, to the softer side.

But whatever compliance the necessities of nature may require, the wants of fancy children should never be gratified in, nor suffered to mention. The very speaking for any such thing should make them lose it. Clothes, when they need, they must have; but if they speak for this stuff, or that color, they should be sure to go without it. Not that I would have parents purposely cross the desires of their children in matters of indifferency; on the contrary, where their carriage deserves it, and one is sure it will not corrupt or effeminate their

minds, and make them fond of trifles, I think all things should be contrived, as much as could be, to their satisfaction, that they might find the ease and pleas ure of doing well. The best for children is, that they should not place any pleasure in such things at all, nor regulate their delight by their fancies; but be indifferent to all that nature has made so. This is what their parents and teachers should chiefly aim at; but till this be obtained, all that I oppose here, is the liberty of asking; which, in these things of conceit, ought to be restrained by a constant forfeiture annexed to it.

This may perhaps be thought a little too severe, by the natural indulgence of tender parents, but yet it is no more than necessary. For since the method I propose is to banish the rod, this restraint of their tongues will be of great use to settle that awe we have elsewhere spoken of, and to keep up in them the respect and reverence due to their parents. Next, it will teach them to keep in, and so master their inclinations. By this means they will be brought to learn the art of stifling their desires, as soon as they rise up in them, when they are easiest to be subdued. For giving vent, gives life and strength to our appetites, and he that has the confidence to turn his wishes into demands, will be but a little way from thinking he ought to obtain them. This I am sure of every one can more easily bear a denial from himself, than from anybody else. They should therefore be accustomed betimes to consult and make use of their reason, before they give allowance to their inclinations. It is a great step towards the mastery of our desires, to give this stop to them, and shut them up in silence. This habit, got by children, of staying the forwardness of their fancies, and deliberating whether it be fit or no before they speak, will be of no small advantage to them in matters of greater consequence in the future course of their lives. For that which I can not too often inculcate, is that whatever the matter be, about which it is conversant, whether great or small, the main (I had almost said only) thing to be considered, in every action of a child is, what influence it will have upon his mind; what habit it tends to, and is like to settle in him; how it will become him when he is bigger; and, if it be encouraged, whither it will lead him when he is grown up.

My meaning, therefore, is not, that children should purposely be made uneasy; this would relish too much of inhumanity and ill-nature, and be apt to infect them with it. They should be brought to deny their appetites, and their minds as well as bodies, be made vigorous, easy, and strong, by the custom of having. their inclinations in subjection, and their bodies exercised with hardships; but all this without giving them any mark or apprehension of ill-will towards them. The constant loss of what they craved or carved to themselves should teach them modesty, submission, and a power to forbear; but the rewarding their modesty and silence, by giving them what they liked, should also assure them of the love of those who rigorously exacted this obedience. The contenting themselves now, in the want of what they wished for, is a virtue that another time should be rewarded with what is suited and acceptable to them; which should be bestowed on them as if it were a natural consequence of their good behavior, and not a bargain about it. But you will lose your labor, and, what is more, their love and reverence too, if they can receive from others what you deny them. This is to be kept very staunch, and carefully to be watched. And here the servants come again in my way.