procure a school-fellow a whipping.  I have often remarked your lordship with admiration, talking big and blustering loud, so as to frighten urchins who were about half your lordship’s size, when you had no precise meaning in any thing you said.  And I shall never forget, the longest day I have to live, when I hugged you in my arms in a kind of prophetic transport, in consequence of your whispering me, in the midst of a room-full of company, in so sly a manner that nobody could observe you, that you had just seen John the coachman bestow upon Betty the cook-maid, a most devout and cordial embrace.  From your rawest infancy you were as much distinguished, as Milton represents the goddess Hebe to have been, by “nods and becks and wreathed smiles;” with this difference, that in her they were marks of gaiety, and in you of demureness; that in her they were unrestrained and general, and in you intended only for a single confidant.  My lord, reflecting upon all these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that I treated your lordship even in clouts with the reverence due to an infant Jove, and always considered myself as superintending the institution of the first statesman that ever existed.

But, my lord, it has ever been my opinion, that let nature do as much as she will, it is in the power of education to do still more.  The many statesmanlike qualities that you brought into the world with you, sufficiently prove, that no man was ever more deeply indebted to the bounty of nature than your lordship.  And yet of all those qualities she has bestowed upon you, there is not one that I hold in half so much esteem, as that docility, which has ever induced you to receive my instructions with implicit veneration.  It is true, my coat is fustian, and my whole accoutrement plebeian.  My shoes are clouted, and it is long since the wig that defends this penetrating brain, could boast a crooked hair.  But you, my lord, have been able to discover the fruit through the thick and uncomely coat by which it was concealed; you have cracked the nut and have a right to the kernel.

My lord, I thought it necessary to premise these observations, before I entered upon those important matters of disquisition, which will form the object of my present epistle.  It is unnecessary for me to inform a person of so much discernment as your lordship, that education is, by its very nature, a thing of temporary duration.  Your lordship’s education has been long, and there have been cogent reasons why it should be so.  God grant, that when left to walk the world alone, you be not betrayed into any of those unlucky blunders, from the very verge of which my provident hand has often redeemed your lordship!  Do not mistake me, my lord, when I talk of the greatness of your talents.  It is now too late to flatter:  This is no time for disguise.  Pardon me therefore, my dear and ever-honoured pupil, if I may seem to offend against those minuter laws of etiquette, which were made only for common cases.  At so important a crisis it is necessary to be plain.