CHAPTER XX. 151 may be easily taken in by boys. The first principles and easier practices of arithmetic, geometry, plain trigonometry, measuring heights, depths, lengths, distances, tçc. The rudiments of geome- try and astronomy, together with something of mechanics, may be easily conveyed into the mindsof acute young persons from }pine or ten years old and upward. These studies may be enter- taining and useful to young ladies as well as to gentlemen, and to all those who are bred up to the learned professions. The fair sex may intermingle those with the operations of the needle, and the knowledge of domestic life. Boys may be taught to join themwith their rudiments of grammar, and their labour in the languages. And even those who never learn any language but their mother-tongue may be taught these sciences with lasting benefit in early clays. That this may be done with ease and advantage take these three reasons : (1.) Because they depend so much upon schemes and num= bers, images, lines and figures, and sensible things, that the imagination or fancy will greatly assist the understanding, and render the knowledge of them much more easy. (2.) These studies are so pleasant, that they will make the dry labour of learning words, phrases and languages more tolerable to boys its a Latin school by this most agreeable mixture. The employment of youth in these studies will tempt them to neglect many of the foolish plays of childhood, and they will find sweeter entertain- ment for themselves and their leisure hours by a cultivation of these pretty pieces of alluring knowledge. (3.) Theknowledge of these parts of science are both easyand worthy to be retained in memory by all children when they come to manly years, for they are useful through all the parts of human life : they tend to enlarge the understanding early, and to give a various acquaint- ance with useful subjects betimes. And surely it is best, as far as possible, to train up children in the knowledge of those things which they should never forget, rather than to let them waste years of life in trifles, or in hard words which are not worth remembering. And here by the way I cannot but wonder, that any author in our age should have attempted to teach any of the exploded physics of Descartes, or the nobler inventions of Sir Isaac New- ton, in his hypothesis of the heavenly bodies and their motions, in his doctrine of light and colours, and other parts of his phy- siology, or to instruct children in the knowledge of the theory of the heavens, earth and planets, without any figures or diagrams. Is it possible to give a boy or a young lady the clear, distinct and proper apprehensions of these things without lines and figures to describe them ? Does not their understanding want theaid of fancy and images to convey stronger and juster ideas of them to
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