on them by luxury, vanity, and fashion. By mingling at an early age in the scenes where luxury, vanity, and fashion, reign with arbitrary sway, young people must naturally be impressed with all the prejudices which these have a tendency to inspire: instead of acquiring an useful knowledge of the world, they become incapable of viewing the world with an unprejudiced and discerning eye. If possible, therefore, we should labour to restrain young people from mingling in the scenes of gay and dissipated life, till after they have attained a certain maturity of age and judgment: they will then be more able to view them in a proper light; and perhaps be happy enough to escape their contagion.

But fortunately there is another and a more valuable knowledge of the world; and this we ought most industriously to communicate to them, as soon as they are capable of receiving it. When they are made thoroughly acquainted with the distinctions between right and wrong, between virtue and vice, between piety and impiety, and have become capable of entering into our reasonings; we ought then to inform them concerning the various establishments and institutions existing in society; concerning the opinions, customs, and manners of mankind; concerning the various. degrees of strength or weakness of mind, of ingenuity or dulness, of virtuous or vicious qualities, which discriminate those characters which appear in society. We ought also to seize every opportunity, of exemplifying our lessons, by instances in real life. We must point out those circumstances which have led mankind to place an undue value on some objects, while others are appreciated much below their real utility and importance, Thus, let us fortify their judgment against that impression which the dazzling novelty of the scene, and force of passion, will be apt to produce; and thus communicatee to them a knowledge of the world, without exposing them imprudently to the infection of its vices or its follies,

VOL. 1.

At

At length the period arrives when the youth must be emancipated, set free from subjection, and committed to the guidance of their own conscience and reason, and of those principles which we have laboured to inculcate on their minds: let us, then, warn them of the dangers to which they are about to be exposed; tell them of the glory and happiness to which they may attain; inspire them, if possible, with a hearty disdain for folly, vanity, and vice, whatever dazzling or enchanting forms they may assume; and then set them forward, to enrich their minds with new stores of knowledge, by visiting foreign nations, or to enter immediately on the duties of some useful employment in active life.

THE

THE

MODERN PRECEPTOR.

CHAPTER I.

ON LANGUAGE.

No inquiry can be more useful or agreeable than that into

the nature, the origin, and the principles of language. By language we are enabled to communicate one to another our ideas and feelings, either in conversation or by writing. Conversation furnishes us with information, in the order and rapidity with which conceptions are formed in the mind of the speaker; and writing lays open to us the treasures of science, learning, and experience; the opinions, discoveries, and transactions of the most distant ages, and the most remote situations. It is, in fact, by language that man is chiefly distinguished from the other animals: not that these have not modes of expressing their sensations, by which they are mutually understood; but this species of language seems to be limited entirely to the expression of Passion; whereas in man, language, as the organ of reason, to which it gives its proper activity, use, and ornament, becomes a vehicle for a boundless variety of expression adapted to the various powers and faculties of the human frame. Nay, so much is this the case, that in proportion as language is enlarged, refined,

and

and polished, the nation where it prevails is justly regarded as exalted above others, in the scale of civilization and improvement of understanding.

our senses.

So close is the connection between words and ideas, that no learning whatever can be obtained without their interposition and assistance. In proportion as words are studied and examined, ideas become more clear and complete; and according to the fulness and accuracy with which our ideas are conveyed to others, the perplexities of doubt, the errors of misconception, and the cavils of dispute are avoided. For it is always to be remembered, that words are connected with, and received as the representatives of ideas, merely by custom, and not from any natural affinity between them: and that ideas, like rays of light, are liable to be tinged, by the shades of the medium through which they are conveyed to Had this circumstance been duly attended to, the many ponderous volumes of controversy, which fill the libraries of the learned, would never have existed; the disputants, on giving clear and comprehensible explanations of the terms severally employed, finding their opinions, however contradictory in appearance, to be much more concordant than had been aprehended. Hence arises the importance, and indeed, the necessity of clear and distinct conception in the mind of the speaker, and of correct appropriation of terms in his language, to convey to the hearer adequate impressions of the ideas and notions intended to be communicated. Definitions and explanations are, however, not always sufficient to give precisely the meaning of words; derivation must frequently be called in to give its aid: for from derivation we discover the source whence a word springs, and the various streams of signification flowing from it. Much advantage will to the same end, be drawn from history, where the student will find allusions, idioms, figures of speech, illustrated by particular facts, pinions, and institutions. Thus, for example, without

some

some acquaintance with the Roman laws, many passages in Cicero's Orations will be unintelligible; the customs of the Greeks throw light on the language of their writers;

and

many descriptions, allusions, and injunctions in the Sacred Scriptures, are not to be comprehended without a knowledge of the opinions and manners of the East. Furnished, therefore, with such aids, the scholar acquires not partial, but complete information, is enabled to throw upon language all the light collected from his mass of study, and imbibes, as far as can now be done, the genuine sense and spirit of ancient writers.

The student who confines his attention entirely to his native tongue, will never be able to arrive at a perfect knowledge of it, or to ascertain with precision, its riches or its poverty, its beauties or its defects: but he, who, together with his own language, cultivates those of other countries and other times, acquires new means to increase his stock of ideas, and discovers new paths laid open, to conduct him to knowledge. Such a person draws his learning from the purests sources, converses with the natives of other countries, without the need of an interpreter, and peruses original compositions, without being reduced to have recourse to the feeble and often deceptious light of translations. He may unite the speculations of the philosopher, with the acquirements of the linguist, comparing different tongues, and forming just conclusions with respect to their beauties and defects, and their correspendence with the temper, genius, and manners of a people. He may trace the progress of rational refinement, and discover, by a comparison of arts and improvements with their respective terms, that the history of language, considered as unfolding the effects of human genius, and the rise and advancement of its inventions, constitutes a very important part of the history

of man.