se early bad impressions of folly and vice, to which our
children are subject. Their parents are suffered to see them only twice
a year; the visit to last but an hour; they are allowed to kiss the
child at meeting and parting; but a professor, who always stands by on
those occasions, will not suffer them to whisper, or use any fondling
expressions, or bring any presents of toys, sweetmeats, and the like.

The pension from each family, for the education and entertainment of a
child, upon failure of due payment, is levied by the emperor's officers.

The nurseries for children of ordinary gentlemen, merchants, traders,
and handicrafts, are managed proportionally after the same manner; only
those designed for trades are put out apprentices at eleven years old,
whereas those persons of quality continue in their exercises till
fifteen, which answers to twenty-one with us; but the confinement is
gradually lessened for the last three years.

In the female nurseries, the young girls of quality are educated much
like the males, only they are dressed by orderly servants of their own
sex; but always in the presence of a professor or deputy, till they come
to dress themselves, which is at five years old. And if it be found that
these nurses ever presume to entertain the girls with frightful or
foolish stories, or the common follies practised by the chambermaids
among us, they are publicly whipped thrice about the city, imprisoned
for a year, and banished for life to the most desolate part of the
country. Thus, the young ladies there are as much ashamed of being
cowards and fools as the men, and despise all personal ornaments beyond
decency and cleanliness: neither did I perceive any difference in their
education, made by their difference of sex, only that the exercises of
the women were not altogether so robust, and that some rules were given
them relating to domestic life, and a smaller compass of learning was
enjoined them: for their maxim is that, among people of quality, a wife
should be always a reasonable and agreeable companion, because she
cannot always be young. When the girls are twelve years old, which
among them is the marriageable age, their parents or guardians take
them home, with great expressions of gratitude to the professors, and
seldom without tears of the young lady and her companions.

In the nurseries of females of the meaner sort, the children are
instructed in all kinds of works proper for their sex and th