The vacations are equally
injurious to the morals of the masters and pupils, and the
intercourse, which the former keep up with the nobility, introduces
the same vanity and extravagance into their families, which banish
domestic duties and comforts from the lordly mansion, whose state
is awkwardly aped on a smaller scale. The boys, who live at a
great expence with the masters and assistants, are never
domesticated, though placed there for that purpose; for, after a
silent dinner, they swallow a hasty glass of wine, and retire to
plan some mischievous trick, or to ridicule the person or manners
of the very people they have just been cringing to, and whom they
ought to consider as the representatives of their parents.
Can it then be a matter of surprise, that boys become selfish and
vicious who are thus shut out from social converse? or that a mitre
often graces the brow of one of these diligent pastors? The desire
of living in the same style, as the rank just above them, infects
each individual and every class of people, and meanness is the
concomitant of this ignoble ambition; but those professions are
most debasing whose ladder is patronage; yet out of one of these
professions the tutors of youth are in general chosen. But, can
they be expected to inspire independent sentiments, whose conduct
must be regulated by the cautious prudence that is ever on the
watch for preferment?
So far, however, from thinking of the morals of boys, I have heard
several masters of schools argue, that they only undertook to teach
Latin and Greek; and that they had fulfilled their duty, by sending
some good scholars to college.
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