388 ON THE EDOCAION OF YOUTH. should be ashamed to see these young creatures that are under my care, so aukward in company at fourteen, as I was at four and twenty " And thus Antigone brought up her young family of daugh- ters agreeable to her own loose notions ; for she had formed her sentiments of education merely from the aversion she had con- ceived to the way of her elders, and chose the very reverse of their conduct for her rule, because their piety and wisdom had a little alloy of rigour and stiffness attending it. The young things under their mother's eye, could manage the tea -table at ten years old, when they could hardly read a chapter in the New Testa- ment. At fourteen they learned the airs of the world; they gad abroad at their pleasure, and will hardly suffer Antigone to direct them or go with them ; they despise the old woman betimes, for they can visit without her attendance, and prattle abundantly without her prompting. She led or sent them to the playhouse twice or thrice a week, where a great part of their natural modesty is worn off and for - gotten : modesty, the guard of useful virtue! they can talk love stories out of Cleopatra : they are well practised already in the arts of scandal, and for want of better furniture of mind, emp- tiness, and impertinence, ribands and fashions, gay gentlemen and wanton sons, ever dwell upon their tongues. They have been taught so little to set a guard upon themselves, that their virtue is much suspected. But (be that as it will) they are seized and married before sixteen, being tempted away to bind them- selves for life, to a laced coat and a fashionable wig. Thus chil- dren set up at once to govern a family ; but so ignorant in all those concerns, that, from the garret to the kitchen, the whole house is entirely ruled by the humour of the servants, be- cause the young mistress knows not how to instruct or cor- rect them. There is neither religion nor prudence among them, at home or abroad. Thus thay make haste to ruin and misery in this world, without thought or hope of the world to come and the heaven or the hell that await us there. Antigone sees her own mistake too late ; and though she has not so just a sense and horror of their loose and profane life as would become her years, yet she is vexed to see herself neglected so soon, and scorned by her own children; but she confesses, with a sigh, that she has led them the way, by laughing so often at her good old grandmother. How much wiser is Phronissa in the education that she gives her daughters, who maintains a happy medium between the severity of the last age, and the wild licence of this ! She ma- nages her conduct towards them with such an admirable felicity, that though she confines them within the sacred limits of virtue
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