. He was not a very capital performer, but he was always very willing; and found as much pleasure in his own performance as the best of them. Jack Ryland too would sometimes join in a catch, though indeed he had but two, Christ-church bells, and Jack, thou'rt a toper: and Annesly alledged that he was often out in the last, but Jack would never allow it.
Besides these, there were certain evenings appropriated to exercises of the mind. "It is not enough, said Annesly, to put weapons into those hands which never have been taught the use of them; the reading we recommend to youth will store their minds with intelligence, if they attend to it properly; but to go a little farther▪ we must accustom them to apply it, we must teach them the art of comparing the ideas with which it has furnished them."
In this view it was the practice, at those stated times I have mentioned, for Billy, or his sister, to read a select passage of some classical author, on whose relations, they delivered opinions, or on whose sentiments they offered a comment. Never was seen more satisfaction on a countenance, than used to enlighten their father's, at the delivery of those observations, which his little philosophers were accustomed to make: indeed, there could scarcely, even to a stranger, be a more pleasing exhibition; their very errors were delightful, because they were the errors of benevolence, generosity, and virtue.
As punishments are necessary in all societies, Annesly was obliged to invent some for the regulation of his: they consisted only of certain modifications of disgrace. One of them I shall mention, because it was exactly opposite to the practice of most of our schools, while there, offences are punished by doubling the task of the scholar: with Annesly, the getting of a lesson or performing of an exercise was a privilege, of which a forfeiture was incurred by misbehaviour; to teach his children, that he offered them instructions as a favor, instead of pressing it as a hardship.
Billy had a small part of his father's garden allotted him for his peculiar property, in which he wrought himself, being furnished with no other assistance from the gardener than directions how to manage it, and parcels of the seeds which they enabled him to sow. When he had brought these to maturity, his father purchased the produce; Billy, with part of the purchase-money, was to lay in the stores necessary for his future industry, and the overplus he had the liberty of
