THE
Academy Keeper.
[Price One Shilling]
THE
Academy Keeper:
OrVarietyof useful
DIRECTIONS
Concerning the Management of an
ACADEMY,
THE
Terms,Diet,Lodging,Recreation,
Discipline, andInstructionof
YOUNG GENTLEMEN.
WITH THE
Proper Methods of addressing Parents and
Guardians of all Ranks and Conditions.
AS ALSO
NecessaryRulesfor the proper Choice and Treatment
of Academy-Wives, Ushers, and other
menial Servants: with the Reasons of making them public.
Quando pauperiem, missis ambagibus, horres;
Accipe, quâ ratione, queas ditescere. Hor.
LONDON:
Printed forTho. Peat, No. 22. Fleet-Street.
M.DCC.LXX.
Transcriber's Note: In the Contents, Chapter IX has been changed to read "Ushers" only and Chapter X, "Other Servants", which was not included in the original text, has been added. Sect. 14 in Chapter IX is missing from the original text.
INTRODUCTION.
After many unsuccessful experiments, made some years ago, to retrieve a declining fortune, I was lucky enough at last to marry the mistress of a boarding-school: her circumstances were not, indeed, at the time of our marriage, very considerable. But as I was neither unacquainted with the world, nor the more useful sciences, by a peculiar attention to the tempers of the boys, and the dispositions of their parents, by a flexibility of face, for which I was always remarkable, the assistance of a northern degree, and a tolerable share of assiduity; I soon accumulated a large fortune with credit. My eldest daughter I afterwards married to a favourite usher, resigned to him the school, and for his service drew up most of the following rules. After his decease I favoured many others with a copy, who adhered to them with equally great advantage, and added a few to their number: I therefore should not acquit myself properly as a citizen of the world, if I did not give every one an opportunity of seeing them who may have occasion to use them. Many alterations in the mode of education render them indeed, at this time, peculiarly necessary.
Mothers, not school-masters, have with great propriety of late, the sole direction of their children's studies; as also what punishments shall be inflicted on them; what diversions must be allowed them; what degree of insolence they may express to their ushers; and what liberties they may take with their school-fellows. These are circumstances formerly unknown, and many, by a too great inattention to them, and an adherence to the ancient plan, have lately been ruined.
There is another inducement to the publication of these rules, which I must not suppress. The cause of learning declines with the reputation of its friends. And if we enquire, why the character of an Academy-Keeper is treated with such general contempt, we shall not find the t