But (for this is too light an instance for the subject) Mr. Locke proceeds—­“One who knowing how much virtue and a well-tempered soul is to be preferred to any sort of learning or language,” [What a noble writer is this!] “makes it his chief business to form the mind of his scholars, and give that a right disposition:”  [Ay, there, dear Sir, is the thing!] “which, if once got, though all the rest should be neglected,” [charmingly observed!] “would, in due time,” [without wicked dice, I hope!] “produce all the rest; and which, if it be not got and settled, so to keep out ill and vicious habits, languages and sciences, and all the other accomplishments of education, will be to no purpose, but to make the worse or more dangerous man.” [Now comes the place I am so much delighted with!] “And indeed, whatever stir there is made about getting of Latin, as the great and difficult business, his mother” [thank you, dear Sir, for putting this excellent author into my hands!] “may teach it him herself, if she will but spend two or three hours in a day with him,” [If she will!  Never fear, but I will, with the highest pleasure in the world!] “and make him read the Evangelists in Latin to her.” [How I long to be five or six years older, as well as my dearest babies, that I may enter upon this charming scheme!] “For she need but buy a Latin Testament, and having got somebody to mark the last syllable but one, where it is long, in words above two syllables (which is enough to regulate her pronunciation and accenting the words), read daily in the Gospels, and then let her avoid understanding them in Latin, if she can.”

Why, dear Sir, you have taught me almost all this already; and you, my beloved tutor, have told me often, I read and pronounce Latin more than tolerably, though I don’t understand it:  but this method will teach me, as well as your dear children—­But thus the good gentleman proceeds—­“And when she understands the Evangelists in Latin, let her in the same manner read Aesop’s Fables, and so proceed on to Eutropius, Justin, and such other books.  I do not mention this,” adds Mr. Locke, “as an imagination of what I fancy may do, but as of a thing I have known done, and the Latin tongue got with ease this way.”

He then mentions other advantages, which the child may receive from his mother’s instruction, which I will try more and more to qualify myself for:  particularly, after he has intimated, that “at the same time that the child is learning French and Latin, he may be entered also in arithmetic, geography, chronology, history, and geometry too; for if,” says he, “these be taught him in French or Latin, when he begins once to understand either of these tongues, he will get a knowledge of these sciences, and the language to boot.”  He then proceeds:  “Geography, I think, should be begun with:  for the learning of the figure of the globe, the situation