Why are we never quite at our ease in the presence of a
schoolmaster?--because we are conscious that he is not quite at his
ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place, in the society of his
equals. He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, and he
cannot fit the stature of his understanding to yours. He cannot meet
you on the square. He wants a point given him, like an indifferent
whist-player. He is so used to teaching, that he wants to be teaching
_you_. One of these professors, upon my complaining that these little
sketches of mine were any thing but methodical, and that I was unable
to make them otherwise, kindly offered to instruct me in the method by
which young gentlemen in _his_ seminary were taught to compose English
themes.--The jests of a schoolmaster are coarse, or thin. They do
not _tell_ out of school. He is under the restraint of a formal and
didactive hypocrisy in company, as a clergyman is under a moral one.
He can no more let his intellect loose in society, than the other
can his inclinations.--He is forlorn among his co-evals; his juniors
cannot be his friends.

"I take blame to myself," said a sensible man of this profession,
writing to a friend respecting a youth who had quitted his school
abruptly, "that your nephew was not more attached to me. But persons
in my situation are more to be pitied, than can well be imagined. We
are surrounded by young, and, consequently, ardently affectionate
hearts, but _we_ can never hope to share an atom of their affections.
The relation of master and scholar forbids this. _How pleasing this
must be to you, how I envy your feelings_, my friends will sometimes
say to me, when they see young men, whom I have educated, return after
some years absence from school, their eyes shining with pleasure,
while they shake hands with their old master, bringing a present of
game to me, or a toy to my wife, and thanking me in the warmest terms