its jollity.  I can neither laugh nor drink; have contracted a hesitating, disagreeable manner of speaking, and a visage that looks ill-nature itself; in short, I have thought myself into a settled melancholy, and an utter disgust of all that life brings with it.  Whence this romantic turn that all our family are possessed with?  Whence this love for every place and every country but that in which we reside—­for every occupation but our own? this desire of fortune, and yet this eagerness to dissipate?  I perceive, my dear sir, that I am at intervals for indulging this splenetic manner, and following my own taste, regardless of yours.

The reasons you have given me for breeding up your son as a scholar are judicious and convincing; I should, however, be glad to know for what particular profession he is designed.  If he be assiduous and divested of strong passions (for passions in youth always lead to pleasure), he may do very well in your college; for it must be owned that the industrious poor have good encouragement there, perhaps better than in any other in Europe.  But if he has ambition, strong passions, and an exquisite sensibility of contempt, do not send him there, unless you have no other trade for him except your own.  It is impossible to conceive how much may be done by a proper education at home.  A boy, for instance, who understands perfectly well Latin, French, Arithmetic, and the principles of the Civil Law, and can write a fine hand, has an education that may qualify him for any undertaking; and these parts of learning should be better inculcated, let him be designed for whatever calling he will.

Above all things let him never touch a romance or novel; these paint beauty in colours more charming than nature, and describe happiness that man never tastes.  How delusive, how destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss!  They teach the youthful mind to sigh after beauty and happiness that never existed; to despise the little good which fortune has mixed in our cup, by expecting more than she ever gave; and, in general, take the word of a man who has seen the world and who has studied human nature more by experience than precept; take my word for it, that books teach us very little of the world.  The greatest merit in a state of poverty would only serve to make the possessor ridiculous—­may distress, but cannot relieve him.  Frugality, and even avarice, in the lower orders of mankind, are true ambition.  These afford the only ladder for the poor to rise to preferment.  Teach then, my dear sir, to your son thrift and economy.  Let his poor wandering uncle’s example be placed before his eyes.  I had learned from books to be disinterested and generous, before I was taught from experience the necessity of being prudent.  I had contracted the habits and notions of a philosopher, while I was exposing myself to the insidious approaches of cunning:  and often by being, even with my narrow finances, charitable to excess, I forgot the rules of justice, and placed myself in the very situation of the wretch who thanked me for my bounty.  When I am in the remotest part of the world, tell him this, and perhaps he may improve from my example.  But I find myself again falling into my gloomy habits of thinking.