7. It was freely allowed them to place an ardent affection upon those whose excellent endowments recommended them to the love and consideration of any one; but then this was always done with the greatest innocency and modesty, and every way becoming the strictest rules and measures of virtue, it being accounted a base and dishonorable passion in any one to love the body and not the mind, as those did who in their young men preferred the beauty of the one before the excellency of the other. Chaste thoughts and modest discourses were the usual entertainments of their loves; and if any one was accused at any time either of wanton actions or impure discourse, it was esteemed by all so infamous a thing, that the stains it left upon his reputation could never be wiped out during his whole life. 8. So strict and severe was the education of their youth, that whenever they were met with in the streets by your grave and elderly persons, they underwent a close examination; it being their custom to enquire of them upon what business and whither they were going, and if they did not give them a direct and true answer to the question demanded of them, but shamed them with some idle story or false pretence, they never escaped without a rigorous censure and sharp correction. And this they did to prevent their youth from stealing abroad upon any idle or bad design, that so, through the uneasy fears of meeting these grave examiners, and the impossibility of escaping punishment upon their false account and representations of things, they might be kept within due compass, and do nothing that might entrench upon truth or offend against the rules of virtue. Nor was it expected only from their superiors to censure and admonish them upon any miscarriage or indecency whatsoever, but it was strictly required of them under a severe penalty; for he who did not reprove a fault that was committed in his presence, and showed not his just resentments of it by a verbal correction, was adjudged equally culpable with the guilty, and obnoxious to the same punishment. For they could not imagine that person had a serious regard for the honor of their laws and the reputation of their government, who could carelessly pass by any immorality and patiently see the least corruption of good manners in their youth; by which means they took away all occasions of fondness, partiality, and indulgence in the aged, and all presumption, irreverence, and disobedience, and especially all impatiency of reproof, in the younger sort. For not to endure the reprehension of their superiors in such cases was highly disgraceful to them, and ever interpreted as an open renunciation of their authority, and a downright opposing of the justice of their proceedings.