Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/288

282 There is not, perhaps, in the kingdom, a more dogmatical, or luxurious et of men, than the pedantic tyrants who reide in colleges and preide at public chools. The vacations are equally injurious to the morals of the maters and pupils, and the intercoure, which the former keep up with the nobility, introduces the ame vanity and extravagance into their families, which banih dometic duties and comforts from the lordly manion, whoe tate is awkwardly aped on a maller cale. The boys, who live at a great expene with the maters and aitants, are never dometicated, though placed there for that purpoe; for, after a ilent dinner, they wallow a haty glas of wine, and retire to plan ome michievous trick, or to ridicule the peron or manners of the very people they have jut been cringing to, and whom they ought to conider as the repreentatives of their parents.

Can it then be a matter of urprie that boys become elfih and vicious who are thus hut out from ocial convere? or that a mitre often graces the brow of one of thee diligent pators?

The deire of living in the ame tyle, as the rank jut above them, infects each individual and every clas of people, and meannes is the concomitant of this ignoble ambition; but thoe profeions are mot debaing whoe ladder is patronage: yet, out of one of thee profeions the tutors of youth are, in general, choen. But, can they be expected to inpire independent entiments, whoe conduct mut be regulated by the cautious prudence that is ever on the watch for preferment? So&ensp;