ral knowledge, as they fhall never forget, but daily augment with delight. Then alfo those poets which are now counted moft hard, will be both facile and pleasant, Orpheus, Hefiod, Theocritus, Aratus, Nicander, Oppian, Dionyfius; and in Latin, Lucretius, Manilius, and the rural part of Virgil.

By this time, years and good general precepts will have furnished them more diftinctly with that act of reason which in Ethics is called Proairefis; that they may with fome judgment contemplate upon moral good and evil. Then will be required a special reinforcement of conftant and found endoctrinating to fet them right and firm, inftructing them more amply in the knowledge of virtue and the hatred of vice: while their young and pliant affections are led through all the moral works of Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, Plutarch, Laertius, and thofe Locrian remnants; but ftill to be reduced in their nightward ftudies, wherewith they close the day's work, under the determinate sentence of David or Solomon, or the evangelifts and apoftolic fcriptures. Being perfect in the knowledge of perfonal duty, they may then begin the study of œconomics. And either now, or before this, they may have eafily learnt at any odd hour the Italian tongue. And foon after, but with warinefs and good antidote, it would be wholesome enough to let them taste some choice comedies, Greek, Latin, or Italian: those tragedies alfo that treat of houfhold matters, as Trachiniæ, Alceftis, and the like. The next remove must be to the ftudy of Politics; to know the beginning, end, and

reafons

reafons of political focieties; that they may not, in a dangerous fit of the commonwealth, be fuch poor, fhaken, uncertain reeds, of fuch a tottering confcience, as many of our great counsellors have lately fhewn themselves, but stedfast pillars of the state. After this they are to dive into the grounds of law, and legal juftice; delivered first, and with best warrant, by Mofes; and as far as human prudence can be trusted, in those extolled remains of Grecian law-givers, Lycurgus, Solon, Zaleucus, Charondas; and thence to all the Roman edicts and tables, with their Juftinian; and fo down to the Saxon and common laws of England, and the ftatutes. Sundays alfo, and every evening may be now understandingly spent in the highest matters of Theology, and church-history antient and modern and ere this time the Hebrew tongue at a set hour might have been gained, that the fcriptures may be now read in their own original; whereto it would be no impoffibility to add the Chaldee, and the Syrian dialect. When all thefe employments are well conquered, then will the choice hiftories, heroic poems, and Attic tragedies of ftatelieft and most regal argument with all the famous political orations, offer themfelves; which if they were not only read, but fome of them got by memory, and folemnly pronounced with right accent and grace, as might be taught, would endue them even with the fpirit and vigor of Demofthenes, or Cicero, Euripides, or Sophocles. And now, laftly, will be the time to read with them thofe organic arts which enable men to dif courfe

courfe and write perfpicuously, elegantly, and according to the fitteft ftyle of lofty, mean, or lowly. Logic therefore, fo much as is ufeful, is to be referred to this due place, with all her well-couched heads and topics, until it be time to open her contracted palm into a graceful and ornate rhetoric, taught out of the rules of Plato, Aristotle, Phalereus, Cicero, Hermogenes, Longinus. To which Poetry would be made. fubfequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being lefs fubtile and fine, but more fimple, fenfuous and paffionate. I mean not here the profody of a verse, which they could not but have hit on before among the rudiments of grammar; but that fublime art, which in Ariftotle's Poetics, in Horace, and the Italian commentaries of Caftlevetro, Taffo, Mazzoni, and others, teaches what the laws are of a true Epic poem, what of a Dramatic, what of a Lyric, what decorum is, which is the grand mafter-piece to obferve. This would make them foon perceive what defpicable creatures our common rhymers and play-writers be, and fhew them, what religious, what glorious and magnificent use might be made of poetry both in divine and human things. From hence and not till now will be the right season of forming them to be able writers and compofers in every excellent matter, when they shall be thus fraught with an universal infight into things. Or whether they be to speak in parliament or council, honour and attention would be waiting on their lips. There would then also appear in

pulpits

pulpits other vifages, other geftures, and ftuff other, wife wrought than what we now fit under, oft-times to as great a trial of our patience as any other that they preach to us. These are the ftudies wherein our noble and our gentle youth ought to beftow their time in a disciplinary way from twelve to one-andtwenty; unless they rely more upon their ancestors dead, than upon themselves living. In which metho dical course it is so supposed they must proceed by the fteddy pace of learning onward, as at convenient times for memory's fake to retire back into the middle ward, and fometimes into the rear of what they have been taught, until they have confirmed, and folidly united the whole body of their perfected knowledge, like the last embattelling of a Roman legion. Now will be worth the feeing what exercises and recreations may best agree, and become thefe ftudies.

Their EXERCISE.

The courfe of ftudy hitherto briefly described, is, what I can guefs by reading, likeft to those antient and famous fchools of Pythagoras, Plato, Ifocrates, Ariftotle, and fuch others, out of which were bred up fuch a number of renowned philofophers, orators, historians, poets and princes all over Greece, Italy, and Afia, befides the flourishing ftudies of Cyene and Alexandria. But herein it fhall exceed them, and fupply a defect as great as that which Plato noted in

the

the commonwealth of Sparta; whereas that city trained up their youth most for war, and these in their academies and Lycæum, all for the gown, this inftitution of breeding, which I here delineate, fhall be equally good both for peace and war. Therefore about an hour and a half ere they cat at noon should be allowed them for exercife, and due reft afterward; but the time for this may be enlarged at pleasure, according as their rifing in the morning fhall be early. The exercife which I commend first, is the exact use of their weapon, to guard and to ftrike fafely with edge or point; this will keep them healthy, nimble, firong, and well in breath, is alfo the likelieft means to make them grow large and tall, and to inspire them with a gallant and fearlefs courage, which being tempered with seasonable lectures and precepts to them of true fortitude and patience, will turn into a native and heroic valour, and make them hate the cowardife of doing wrong. They must be alfo practifed in all the locks and gripes of wrestling, wherein Englishmen were wont to excel, as need may often be in fight to tug or grapple, and to close. And this perhaps will be enough, wherein to prove and heat their fingle ftrength. The interim of unfweating themfelves regularly, and convenient reft before meat, may both with profit and delight be taken up in recreating and compofing their travailed fpirits with the folemn and divine harmonies of mufic heard or learnt; either while the fkilful organist plies his grave and fancied defcant,