ENGLISH TEACHERS ASSISTANT,




_Pursuit of Knowledge recommended to Youth_.

1. I am very much concerned when I see young gentlemen of fortune and
quality so wholly set upon pleasure and diversions, that they neglect
all those improvements in wisdom and knowledge which may make them easy
to themselves and useful to the world. The greatest part of our
_British_ youth lose their figure, and grow out of fashion, by that time
they are five and twenty.

2. As soon as the natural gaiety and amiableness of the young man wears
off, they have nothing left to recommend them, but _lie by_ the rest of
their lives, among the lumber and refuse of the species.

It sometimes happens, indeed, that for want of applying themselves in
due time to the pursuits of knowledge, they take up a book in their
declining years, and grow very hopeful scholars by that time they are
threescore. I must therefore earnestly press my readers who are in the
flower of their youth, to labour at these accomplishments which may set
off their persons when their bloom is gone, and to _lay in_ timely
provisions for manhood and old age. In short, I would advise the youth
of fifteen to be dressing up every day the man of fifty; or to consider
how to make himself venerable at threescore.

3. Young men, who are naturally ambitious, would do well to observe how