230 MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 



offspring. One cannot help wondering 1 at the 

 uncommon pains a gentleman will take in buying 

 a horse, to see that the animal is perfectly sound, 

 and without blemish, and that he should not take 

 the same pains in choosing a wife, which is of 

 infinitely more importance to him. He, perhaps 

 to repair his shattered fortune, will marry any 

 woman if she has plenty of money. She may, 

 indeed, be the innocent heir to the full-charged 

 hereditary diseases of a pair of voluptuous citizens, 

 just as that may happen to be. No gentleman 

 need to look far from his home, to be enabled to 

 meet with an helpmate, possessing every requisite 

 to make him happy; but, if he cannot meet with 

 such a one, or cannot please himself in his own 

 neighbourhood, he had better travel in search of 

 one from Land's End to John o' Groat's House, 

 than not get a proper partner as the mother of 

 his children. 



I have often thought that the children of 

 gentlemen boys particularly are too soon put 

 to school under improper restraints, and harassed 

 with education before their minds are fit for it. 

 Were they sent to the edge of some moor, to 

 scamper about amongst whins and heather, under 

 the care of some good old man some mentor 

 who would teach them a little every day, without 

 embarrassing them they would there, in this 

 kind of preparatory school, lay in a foundation 

 of health, as well as education. If they were 

 thus allowed to run wild by the sides of burns 

 to fish, to wade, and to splash in they would 

 soon find their minds intently employed in sports 

 and pleasures of their own choosing. It would 

 be found that youth so brought up, besides thus 



