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41
no other difference than what there is between command on one side and
subjection on the other.
Some of these fine queries you have seen which I have been treating you with, and fewer still Rousseau would
have had in store shone away with; nor do I imagine he would have put his Emilius into
an Inspection-house: but I think he would have been glad of such a school
for his Sophia. I
+
+Addison, the grave
and moral Addison,
in his Spectator or
his Tatler,
I forget which, suggests
a contrivance for trying
virginity by means of
lions. You may there
find many curious
disquisitions concerning
the measures and degrees
of that species of purity;
all which you will be
better pleased to have
from that grave author
than from me. But,
without plunging into
any such discussions,
the highest degree
possible, whatsoever
that may be, is no
more than any body
might make sure of,
only by transferring
damsels at as early
an age as may be
thought
sufficient into a
strict Inspection-
School. Addison's
scheme was not only
a penal but a bloody
one: and what havoc
it might have made
in the population of
the country, I tremble
but to think of. Give
thanks then to Diana,
and the eleven
thousand virgins, and
-----
1Improving
upon Psammitichus's
experiment,
-----
to whatever powers
preside over virginity
in either
calendar, for so happy
a discovery as this of
your sons There you
saw blood and
uncertainty: here you
see certainty without
blood. What advantage
might be made
by setting up a boarding-
school for young
ladies upon this plan,
and with what eagerness
gentlemen who
are curious in such
matters would crowd
to such a school
to choose themselves
wives, is too obvious
to insist on. The
Dr. Brown the Estimator would have been stark mad
for an Inspection-school upon the very extremity of the principle: provided
always he were to have been Head-Master: and then he would have had no
other schools but those. His antagonist Dr. Priestly wont will would, I imagine, be
be altogether as averse to it; unless, perhaps, for experiment's sake, upon
a small scale, just enough to furnish an appendix to Hartly upon man.
You have a controversy, I find, in England about Sunday
Schools. Schools upon the extremity of the inspection-principle would, I am
apt to think, find more advocates among the patrons than among the
of that measure.
We are told, somewhere or other, of a King of Egypt
(Psammitichus, I think, was his name) who thinking to rediscover the lost original
of language, contrived to breed up two children, in a sequestered spot, secluded
from the hour of their birth, from all converse with the rest of human kind. No great matters were, I believe,
collected from this experiment. An inspection-house, to which a set of children
had been consigned from their birth, might afford experiments enough that would
be rather more interesting. What say you to a Foundling Hospital upon this principle? Would Sr John Cass's manes give you leave to let your present school
and build another upon this ground? If I do not misrecollect, your
brethren in that trust have gone so far as to make a point, where it can be
effected, of taking the children out of the hands of their parents as much as
much as possible, and even, if possible, altogether. If you have gone thus far,
you have passed the Rubicon: you may even clap them up in an Inspection-house,
and then you may make of them what you please. You need never grudge
the parents a peep behind the curtain in the Masters-Lodge. There as often
as they had a mind, they might see their children thriving and learning, if that would
satisfy them, without interrupting business, or and counteracting discipline.+ You
might keep up a sixteen or eighteen years separation between the male and
the female part of your young subjects; and, at the end of that period, improve
upon Psammatichus's experiment and see what the language of love will would be
when Father Francis's Ganders are were turned in to Father Francis's Geese.
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