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When grace was said after meat, and the damsels departed, the lad began to grow more wicked. Sir John, who is an honest Englishman, hath no other wine but that of Portugal. This our bowe could not drink; and when Sir John very nobly declared he scorned to indulge his palate with rarities, for which he must furnish the foe with money to carry on a war with the nation, the stripling replied, “Rat the nation!” (God forgive me for repeating such words) “I had rather live under French government than be debarred from French wine.” Oho, my youth! if I had you horsed, thinks I again.–But, indeed, Sir John well scourged him with his tongue for that expression, and I should have hoped he had made him ashamed, had not his subsequent behaviour shewn him totally void of grace. For when Sir John asked him for a toast, which you know is another word for drinking the health of one’s friend or wife, or some person of public eminence, he named the health of a married woman, filled out a bumper of wine, swore he would drink her health in vinegar, and at last openly profest he would commit adultery with her if he could. Proh pudor! Nay, and if such a sin might admit of any aggravation, she is it seems a lady of very high degree, et quidem, the wife of a lord.

Et dies et charta deficerent si omnia vellem percurrere, multa quldem impura et impudica quae memorare nefas, recitavit. Nor is this youth, it seems, a monster or prodigy in the age he lives; on the contrary, I am told he is an exemplar only of all the rest.

But I now proceed to what must surprize you. After he had spent an hour in rehearsing all the vices to which youth have been ever too much addicted, and shewn us that he was possessed of them all– Ut qui impudicus, adulter, ganeo, alea, manu, ventre, pene, bona patria laceraverat, he began to enter upon politics:

O proceres censore opus an haruspice nobis!

This stripling, this bowe, this rake, discovered likewise all the wickedness peculiar to age, and that he had not, with those vices which proceed from the warmth of youth, one of the virtues which we should naturally expect from the same sanguine disposition. He shewed us that grey hairs could add nothing but hypocrisy to him; for he avowed public prostitution, laughed at all honour, public spirit, and patriotism; and gave convincing proofs that the most phlegmatic old miser upon earth could not be sooner tempted with gold to perpetrate the most horrid iniquities than himself.

Whether this youth be (quod vix credo) concerned himself in the public weal, or whether he have his information from others, I hope he greatly exceeded the truth in what he delivered on this subject; for was he to be believed, the conclusion we must draw would be, that the only concern of our great men, even at this time, was for places and pensions; that, instead of applying themselves to renovate and restore our sick and drooping commonweal, they were struggling to get closest to her heart, and, like leeches, to suck her last drop of vital blood.

I hope, however, better things, and that this lad deserves a good rod as well for lying as for all his other iniquity; and if his parents do not take care to have it well laid on, I can assure them they have much to answer for.

Mr Wilson now found me grow very uneasy, as, indeed, I had been from the beginning, nor could anything but respect to the company have prevented me from correcting the boy long before; he therefore endeavoured to turn the discourse, and asked our spark when he left London? To which he answered, the Wednesday before. “How, sir?” said I; “travel on Christmas Day?” “Was it so?” says he; “fags! that’s more than I knew; but why not travel on Christmas Day as well as any other?” “Why not?” said I, lifting my voice, for I had lost all patience; “was you not brought up in the Christian religion? Did you never learn your catechism?” He then burst out into an unmannerly laugh, and so provoked me, that I should certainly have smote him, had I not laid my crabstick down in the window, and had not Mr Wilson been fortunately placed between us. “Odso! Mr Parson,” says he, “are you there? I wonder I had not smoked you before.” “Smoke me!” answered I, and at the same time leaped from my chair, my wrath being highly kindled. At which instant a jackanapes, who sat on my left hand, whipped my peruke from my head, which I no sooner perceived than I porrected him a remembrance over the face, which laid him sprawling on the floor. I was afterwards concerned at the blow, though the consequence was only a bloody nose, and the lad, who was a companion of the other’s, and had uttered many wicked things, which I pretermitted in my narrative, very well deserved correction.

A bustle now arose, not worth recounting, which ended in my departure with Mr Wilson, though we had purposed to tarry there that night.

In our way home we both lamented the peculiar hardiness of this country, which seems bent on its own destruction, nor will take warning by any visitation, till the utmost wrath of Divine vengeance overtakes it.

In discoursing upon this subject, we imputed much of the present profligacy to the notorious want of care in parents in the education of youth, who, as my friend informs me, with very little school-learning, and not at all instructed (ne minime quidem imbuti) in any principles of religion, virtue, and morality, are brought to the great city, or sent to travel to other great cities abroad, before they are twenty years of age, where they become their own masters, and enervate both their bodies and minds with all sorts of diseases and vices before they are adult.

I shall conclude with a passage in Aristotle’s Politics, lib. viii. cap. I. “[Greek text]” Which, for the sake of women, and those few gentlemen who do not understand Greek, I have rendered somewhat paraphrastically in the vernacular:–“No man can doubt but that the education of youth ought to be the principal care of every legislator; by the neglect of which, great mischief accrues to the civil polity in every city.”

I am, while you write like an honest man and a good Christian, your hearty friend and well-wisher,

ABRAHAM ADAMS.