nurseries are seminaries of falsehood; and what is called Fashion in
manhood completes the system of avowed insincerity. Mankind, in the
gross, is a gaping monster, that loves to be deceived, and has
seldom been disappointed: nor is their vanity less fallacious to
your philosophers, who adopt modes of truth to follow them through
the paths of error, and defend paradoxes merely to be singular in
defending them. These are they whom ye term Ingenious; 'tis a
phrase of commendation I detest: it implies an attempt to impose on
my judgment, by flattering my imagination; yet these are they whose
works are read by the old with delight, which the young are taught
to look upon as the codes of knowledge and philosophy.

"Indeed, the education of your youth is every way preposterous; you
waste at school years in improving talents, without having ever
spent an hour in discovering them; one promiscuous line of
instruction is followed, without regard to genius, capacity, or
probable situation in the commonwealth. From this bear-garden of
the pedagogue, a raw, unprincipled boy is turned loose upon the
world to travel; without any ideas but those of improving his dress
at Paris, or starting into taste by gazing on some paintings at
Rome. Ask him of the manners of the people, and he will tell you
that the skirt is worn much shorter in France, and that everybody
eats macaroni in Italy. When he returns home, he buys a seat in
parliament, and studies the constitution at Arthur's.

"Nor are your females trained to any more useful purpose: they are
taught, by the very rewards which their nurses propose for good
behaviour, by the first thing like a jest which they hear from every
male visitor of the family, that a young woman is a creature to be
married; and when they are grown somewhat older, are instructed that