Mr. Locke proposes (Section 148) a very pretty method to cheat children, as it were, into learning:  but then he adds, “There may be dice and playthings, with the letters on them, to teach children the alphabet by playing.”  And (Section 151) “I know a person of great quality, who, by pasting on the six vowels (for in our language y is one) on the six sides of a dice, and the remaining eighteen consonants on the sides of three other dice, has made this a play for his children, that he shall win, who at one cast throws most words on these four dice; whereby his eldest son, yet in coats, has played himself into spelling with great eagerness, and without once having been chid for it, or forced to it.”

But I had rather your Billy should be a twelvemonth backwarder for want of this method, than forwarded by it.  For what may not be feared from so early inculcating the use of dice and gaming, upon the minds of children?  Let Mr. Locke himself speak to this in his Section 208, and I wish I could reconcile the two passages in this excellent author.  “As to cards and dice,” says he, “I think the safest and best way is, never to learn any play upon them, and so to be incapacitated for these dangerous temptations, and encroaching wasters of useful time.”  And, he might have added, of the noblest estates and fortunes; while sharpers and scoundrels have been lifted into distinction upon their ruins.  Yet, in Sec. 153, Mr. Locke proceeds to give directions in relation to the dice he recommends.

But after all, if some innocent plays were fixed upon to cheat children into reading, that, as he says, should look as little like a task as possible, it must needs be of use for that purpose.  But let every gentleman, who has a fortune to lose, and who, if he games, is on a foot with the vilest company, who generally have nothing at all to risque, tremble at the thoughts of teaching his son, though for the most laudable purposes, the early use of dice and gaming.

But how much I am charmed with a hint in Mr. Locke, which makes your Pamela hope, she may be of greater use to your children, even as they grow up, than she could ever have flattered herself to be.  ’Tis a charming paragraph; I must not skip one word of it.  Thus it begins, and I will observe upon it as I go along.  Sec. 177:  “But under whose care soever a child is put to be taught, during the tender and flexible years of his life, this is certain, it should be one who thinks Latin and language the least part of education.”

How agreeable is this to my notions; which I durst not have avowed, but after so excellent a scholar!  For I have long had the thought, that much time is wasted to little purpose in the attaining of Latin.  Mr. H., I think, says he was ten years in endeavouring to learn it, and, as far as I can find, knows nothing at all of the matter neither!—­Indeed he lays that to the wicked picture in his grammar, which he took for granted (as he has often said, as well as once written) was put there to teach boys to rob orchards, instead of improving their minds in learning, or common honesty.