ese ideas were put into the boy's head by the servants with
whom he associated.

Without supposing them to be profligate, servants, from their
situation, from all that they see of the society of their superiors,
and from the early prejudices of their own education, learn to admire
that wealth and rank to which they are bound to pay homage. The
luxuries and follies of fashionable life they mistake for happiness;
they measure the respect they pay to strangers by their external
appearance; they value their own masters and mistresses by the same
standard; and in their attachment there is a necessary mixture of that
sympathy which is sacred to prosperity. Setting aside all interested
motives, servants love show and prodigality in their masters; they
feel that they partake the triumph, and they wish it to be as
magnificent as possible. These dispositions break out naturally in the
conversation of servants with one another; if children are suffered to
hear them, they will quickly catch the same tastes. But if these ideas
break out in their unpremeditated gossiping with one another, how much
more strongly will they be expressed when servants wish to ingratiate
themselves into a child's affections by flattery! Their method of
showing their attachment to a family, is usually to exaggerate in
their expressions of admiration of its consequence and grandeur; they
depreciate all whom they imagine to be competitors in any respect with
their masters, and feed and foster the little jealousies which exist
between neighbouring families. The children of these families are thus
early set at variance; the children in the same family are often
taught, by the imprudence or malice of servants, to dislike and envy
each other. In houses where each child has an attendant, the
attendants regularly quarrel, and, out of a show of zeal, make their
young masters and mistresses parties in their animosity. Three or four
maids sometimes produce their little dressed pupils for a few minutes
to _the company_ in the drawing room, for the express purpose of
seeing which shall obtain the greatest share of admiration. This
competition, which begins in their nurses' arms, is continued by daily
artifices through the whole course of their nursery education. Thus
the emulation of children is rendered a torment to them, their
ambition is directed to absurd and vile purposes, the understanding is
perverted, their temper is spoiled, their simplicity of mind, and
thei