"In what particulars, Mr. Flam?" said Sir John Belfield. "In every thing," replied he. "In the first place, don't people educate their daughters entirely for holidays, and then wonder that they are of no use? Don't they charge them to be modest, and then teach them every thing that can make them bold? Are we not angry that they don't attend to great concerns, after having instructed them to take the most pains for the least things? There is my Fan, now, they tell me she can dance as well as a posture mistress, but she slouches in her walk like a milkmaid. Now as she seldom dances, and is always walking, would it not be more rational to teach her to do that best which she is to do the oftenest? She sings like a siren, but 'tis only to strangers. I, who paid for it, never hear her voice. She is always warbling in a distant room, or in every room where there is company; but if I have the gout and want to be amused, she is as dumb as a dormouse." "So much for the errors in educating our daughters," said Sir John, "now for the sons." "As to our boys," returned Mr. Flam, "don't we educate them in one religion, and then expect them to practice another? Don't we cram them with books of heathen philosophy, and then bid them go and be good Christians? Don't we teach them to admire the heroes and gods of the old poets, when there is hardly one hero, and certainly not one god, who would not in this country have been tried at the Old Bailey, if not executed at Tyburn? And as to the goddesses, if they had been brought before us on the bench, brother Stanley, there is scarcely one of them but we should have ordered to the house of correction. The queen of them, indeed, I should have sent to the ducking-stool for a scold. "Then again, don't we tell our sons when men that they must admire a monarchical government, after every pains have been taken, when they were boys, to fill them with raptures for the ancient republics?" "Surely, Mr. Flam," said Sir John, "the ancient forms of government may be studied with advantage, were it only to show us by contrast the superior excellence of our own." "We might," said Miss Sparkes, in a supercilious accent, "learn some things from them which we much want. You have been speaking of economy. These republicans, whom Mr. Flam is pleased to speak of with so much contempt, he must allow, had some good, clever contrivances to keep down the taxes, which it would do us no harm to imitate. Victories were much better bargains to them than they are to us. A few laurel leaves or a sprig of oak was not quite so dear as a pension." "But you will allow, madam," said Sir John, smiling, "that a triumph was a more expensive reward than a title?"