laudable a view, I would propose that schools for the education of such girls should be kept by discreet women; those who have been house-keepers in large families would be the properest persons for this purpose: that the young people should be taught submission and humility to their superiors, decency and modesty in their own dress and behaviour. That they should be very well instructed in all kinds of plain-work, reading, writing, accompts, pastry, pickling, preserving, and other branches of cook ery; be taught to weave, and wash lace, and other linen. Thus instructed, they may be of great comfort and assistance to their parents and husbands; they may have a right to expect the kindest treatment from their mistresses; they are sure to be respected as useful members of society; whereas young ladies are the most useless of all God's creatures. I am, SIR, Your constant reader, and obedient humble servant, C. S. aimed at extirpating the difference The advantages of Ancestry demon- hospitality and martial bravery, for strated. ANCESTRY, however now. slighted by some, and industriously decried by others, has been in all preceding times esteemed and revered. But in this refined and innovating age, when it is the mode to profess a licentiousness of sentiment, even in the most sacred and important concerns; it is not so much to be wondered at, that there are not wanting a set of men, who, from a levelling disposition, speak evil of dignities and distinctions, and have in particular which we were anciently so re- pro th promote a spirit of emulation, than verence and repute; emulation will inevitably subside, and the desire of fame, which has been the source of so many meritorious achievements, will in a manner be extinguished; for every one will then live uninfluenced by the conduct of his progenitors, and equally unawed by any odium infamous actions might deservedly leave upon record. But if the Almighty (as we are told in the Decalogue) visits the sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation, and on the contrary, shews mercy and favour to the issue of the virtuous; why are not the descendants of the one, and of the other, to be duly distinguished among men? Birth, on the one hand, is not to be too highly and immoderately esteemed; we should consider that the most illustrious families, could they be traced to their origin, were at first obscure, and not distinguished from the common race of mortals; and that, however mortifying it may be, many of the greatest families that ever existed, after gradually rising from obscurity to the greatest eminence, wealth, and power, and after having been conspicuous a few centuries, have again as progressively dwindled into extinction. Many such there were, the names of which alone only now remain, which all persons conversant in the history and antiquities of Europe must allow. And how many thousand families of a second class have there been, who after furnishing, for 5, 6, 7, or 800 years, a long succession of knights and gentlemen, have after such various periods of time (and often a much less) dropt into oblivion, either by a total a total cessation of descendants, by the alienation of their estates (thro' prodigality, profusion, and excess) or by some other human contingeney.-Empires and kingdoms have hitherto had an origin, meridian, and period to their glory and continuance; and shall families, which are only so many limbs of states and governments, expect to have a more protracted duration? No; there seems to be nothing human designed for us to pride ourselves too highly upon; those therefore only delude themselves, who, in stead of an humble and due deportment, assume haughtiness and arrogance. As to the influence of blood, or the qualities inherent from descent, though they are not to be insisted upon as infallible, yet they are not to be treated as wholly chimerical by any candid or rational person. The advocates of this say, it is so very apparent, even in animals, that they wonder any one will dispute it and many are the arguments made use of, which are admitted or disputed, as they tally with the principles or prejudices of the persons contending; but that which seems at once to surmount every objection that can be made is, that we seldom fail to see the infirmities and maladies of human nature entailed on posterity. Madness, chronical diseases, violent and inordinate passions, and the various evils of intemperance, are usually transmitted from the parent to his offspring; why then may we not from hence presume to infer, that many valuable and amiable endowments are as often derived from birth? An inherent generosity and benevolence have been the distinguishing characteristics of same fa milies, and various other virtues of others. Children often more resemble their parents by a parity of manners and conduct, than in the external similitude of their persons. This has been observed in orphans and posthumous issue, where neither paternal example nor precept could have been the immediate cause of it. Certain it is, that as there are no general rules without exceptions, so there are many men, who, without the advantages of birth, are possessed of the most valuable qualifications; and, on the contrary, that there are many of a dis tinguished rank, of the most profligate and odious dispositions; but these last are of an unthinking, inconsiderate kind, who, by being immerged in a continual succession of sensual gratifications, never suffer themselves to reflect at all, or trouble themselves about those which have gone before, or shall come after them. But where persons have been ob. served to be filled with a just and due veneration of the virtues of their predecessors, I believe they have seldom been known very glaringly to deviate therefrom, but to imitate, if not improve upon them, has been a plan they have continually kept in view; nay, I am persuaded, that, next to religion, nothing has so strongly actuated thinking men, nor indeed produced so many good and brave men, as their being inspired with a desire of keeping up to the examples of their forefathers. Such a spirit, therefore, (however visionary its basis) it is nationally requisite it should be cherished, particularly amongst a military peo ple. Our neighbours the French and Germans seem more thorough ly ly convinced of this: we find this ancestrian enthusiasm breathing through all their noblesse. And many are of the opinion, it would be more consonant to the epithet our modern lucubratists assume, of being publicly beneficial, if they were properly to inculcate and enforce it, instead of advancing any thing derogatory thereto. On imprisonment for debt. From the Idler. E often look with indiffe The misfortunes of an individual do not extend their influence to. many; yet, if we consider the relations and effects of consanguinity and friendship, and the general reciprocation of wants and benefits, which makes one man dear or necessary to another, it may reasonably be supposed, that every man languishing in prison gives trouble of some kind to two others, who love or need him. By this multiplication of misery we see distress extended to the hundredth part of the whole society. If we estimate at a shilling a day what is lost by the inaction, and WF in of that, which, if the whole were seen together, would shake us with emotion. A debtor is dragged to prison, pitied for a moment, and then forgotten; another follows him, and is lost alike in the caverns of oblivion: but when the whole mass of calamity rises up at once, when twenty thousand reasonable beings are heard all groaning in unnecessary misery, not by the infirmity of nature, but the mistake or negligence of policy, who can forbear to pity and lament, to wonder and abhor? There is no need of declamatory vehemence; we live in an age of commerce and computation; let us, therefore, coolly enquire what is the sum of evil which the imprisonment of debtors brings upon our country. It seems to be the opinion of the later computists, that the inhabitants of England do not exceed six millions, of which twenty thousand is the three hundredth part. What shall of the humanity or the wisdom of a nation, that voluntarily sacrifices one in every three hun dred to lingering destruction? we say man thus chained down to involuntary-idleness, the public loss will rise in one year to three hundred thousand pounds; in ten years to more than a sixth part of our circulating coin. I am afraid that those who are best acquainted with the state of our prisons, will confess that my conjecture is too near the truth, when, I suppose that the corrosion of resentiment, the heaviness of sorrow, the corruption of confined air, the want of exercise, and sometimes of food, the contagion of diseases from which there is no retreat, and the severity of tyrants, against whom there can be no resistance, and all the complicated horrors of a prison, put an end every year to the life of one in four of those that are shut up from the common comforts of human life. Thus perish yearly five thousand men, overborne with sorrow, consumed by famine, or putrified by filth: many of them in the most vi gorous and useful part of life: for the thoughtless and imprudent are commonly young, and the active and busy are seldom old. Accord. According to the rule generally received, which supposes that one in thirty dies yearly, the race of man may be said to be renewed at the end of thirty years. Who would have believed till now, that of every English generation, an hundred and fifty thousand perish in our gaols! That in every century, a nation eminent for science, studious of commerce, ambitious of empire, should willingly lose, in noisome dungeons, five hundred thousand of its inhabitants: a greater number than has ever been destroyed in the same time by the pestilence and sword! A very late occurence may shew us the value of the number which we thus condemn to be useless: in the re-establishment of the trainedbands, thirty thousand are considered as a force sufficient against all exigencies: while, therefore, we detain twenty thousand in prison, we shut up in darkness and uselessness two thirds of an army, which ourselves judge equal to the defence of our country. The monastic institutions have often been blamed, as tending to retard the increase of mankind. And perhaps retirement ought rarely to be permitted, except to those whose employment is consistent with abstraction, and who, though solitary, will not be idle; to those whom infirmity makes useless to others, or to those who have paid their due proportion to society, and who, having lived for others, may be honourably dismissed to live for themselves. But whatever be the evil, or the folly of these retreats, those have no right to censure them whose prisons contain a greater number than the monasteries of other countries. It is, surely, less foolish and less criminal to permit inaction than compel it; to com ply with doubtful opinions of happiness, than condemn to certain and apparent misery; to indulge the extravagancies of erroneous piety, than to multiply and enforce temptations to wicked ness. The misery of gaols is not half their evil: they are filled with every corruption which poverty and wickedness can generate between them; with all the shameless and profligate enormities that can be produced by the impudence of ignominy, the rage of want, and the malignity of despair. In a prison the awe of the public eye is lost, and the power of the law is spent ; there are few fears, there are no blushes. The lewd inflame the lewd; the audacious harden the audacious. Every one fortifies himself as he can against his own sensibility, endeavours to practise on others the arts which are practised on himself, and gains the kindness of his associates by similitude of manners. Thus some sink amidst their mi sery, and others survive only to propagate villainy. It may be hoped that our lawgivers will some time take away from us this power of starving and depraving one another. But, if there be any reason why this inveterate evil should not be remov ed in this age, which true policy has enlightened beyond any former time, let those, whose writings form the opinions and the modes of their contemporaries, endeavour to transfer the infamy of such imprisonment from the debtor to the creditor, till universal infamy shall pursue the wretch, whose wantonness of power, or revenge of disappointment, condemns another to torture and to ruin, till he shall be hunted through the world as an enemy to man, |