Note 5 — Chapter VI
Thomas Frognall Dibdin translation
I may be permitted to add, that if children do not discover any propensity to these studies, we should neither neglect nor despise them; provided their dispositions and conduct be good and regular in other matters. Besides, nothing conclusive can, at first, be drawn from their inattention to these subjects; for a child at twelve years of age may evince as great a regard for them, as she did indifference, at ten. There is little consistency in the human intellect at such a volatile period: the girl of gaity and dissipation at eighteen, may become the devotee at five and twenty.