72G THE NATURE AND CAUSES OE

tion cither to study or to business, than he could well havebecome in so short a time, had he lived at home. By travel-ling so very young, by spending in the most frivolous dissi-pation the most precious years of his life, at a distance fromthe inspection and control of his parents and relations, everyuseful habit, which the earlier parts of his education mighthave had some tendency to form in him, instead of being ri-veted and confirmed, is almost necessarily either weakenedor effaced. Nothing but the discredit into which the uni-versities are allowing themselves to fall, could ever havebrought into repute so very absurd a practice as that of tra-velling at this early period of life. By sending his son abroad,a father delivers himself, at least for some time, from so dis-agreeable an object as that of a son unemployed, neglected,and going to ruin before his eyes.

Such have been the effects of some of the modem institu-tions for education.

Different plans and different institutions for educationseem to have taken place in other ages and nations.

In the republics of ancient Greece, every free citizen wasinstructed, under the direction of the public magistrate, ingymnastic exercises and in music. By gymnastic exercises,it was intended to harden his body, to sharpen his courage,and to prepare him for the fatigues and dangers of war;and as the Greek militia was, by all accounts, one of thebest that ever was in the world, this part of their public edu-cation must have answered completely the purpose for whichit was intended. By the other part, music, it was proposed,at least by the philosophers and historians who have givenus an account of those institutions, to humanize the mind,to soften the temper, and to dispose it for performing all thesocial and moral duties of public and private life.

In ancient Rome , the exercises of the Campus Martiusanswered the same purpose as those of the Gymnazium inancient Greece, and they seem to have answered it equallywell. But among the Romans there was nothing whichcorresponded to the musical education of the Greeks. Themorals of the Romans, however, both in private and publiclife, seem to have been, not only equal, but, upon the whole,a good deal superior to those of the Greeks. That theywere superior in private life, we have the express testimonyof Polybius and of Dionysius of Halicarnassus , two authorswell acquainted with both nations ; and the whole tenor of