Parents should make it a Rule to themselves, never to shew to their Children, both at once, the Marks of extreme Anger, or excessive Fondness; but when a Child has done such a Fault as demands of the Father to affect great Severity, let the Mother put on an equal Share of Lenity and Compassion mixed with Grief: and so on the reverse. Thus too on other Occasions, when the Mother prudently exposes all the motherly Fondness of her Heart, let the Father as prudently conceal a Part of his, and, with an Air of Steadiness, insinuate, that the Conduct which is approved is no more than Duty. But Parents will never be able to act with due Moderation in the Government of their Children, without first resolving to govern, with the utmost Prudence, their own Passions and Tempers. And how will they be able to do this, unless they look inwardly, and study to find them out? If the Man be of a choleric or morose Disposition, and the Woman of a phlegmatic, mild, and affable Temper, the Contrast may prove sovereignly beneficial to their Children, if the Parties, conscious of it in themselves, resolve mutually to apply it under the Direction of Prudence; and found the Government of their young Family’s Passions on that of their own. Whereas, if ignorant of their respective Foibles, or heedless to turn them to Advantage, they give a full Loose to them, and agree in nothing but an unbridled Exertion of them as Occasion or Accident offers, the Contrast will probably prove fatal both to themselves and their Children: they will for the most part be pleased and displeased alike out of Time and out of Measure; their Severities and Lenities will often jar, and rob each other of their due Effect; their Punishments and Rewards, by being never, or but seldom, and that by mere Chance, proportioned to the Failings they mean to correct, or the Merit they Wish to encourage, will prove fruitless, if not destructive: and what is still worse, they will seldom fail, in the midst of Correction, to strengthen the Misconduct they aim at reforming, by the Example they give of it in their own Persons; and as seldom miss, in the Extravagance of their false Fondnesses, of perverting the Minds of their Children from the noble Love of Virtue, to the reptil Hankerings after Rewards, Praises, and Caresses. If a Child is to be reformed of any peevish or passionate Behaviour, what Effect can Correction have on him, if given by a Parent delivered over by his own Passions to all the Fierceness of a Brute? It may make him hate the Correction, but can never make him hate Faults, the opposite Virtues to which he sees not the least Example of in his Corrector. If another is to be encouraged in some commendable Action, what Benefit will he receive from an Excess of Fondness, while the being humour’d in other Actions, perhaps highly discommendable, only teaches him to exchange Vice for Vice, or one Folly for another? Or finally, what