virtue in your own day; yet there will always be some among the better few ready to do you justice, and to judge more candidly. Perhaps, it may be your lot to be singularly favoured by your friends, in this respect. But be not too much elevated thereby. The real good man, as he will never be more undaunted than when most reviled and opposed in his great career of justice, so he will never be more humble than when most courted and applauded.

The two great rocks of life, especially to youth, are prosperity and adversity. If such meet with any degree either of success or difficulty in the world, before they have learned great self-denial, they are apt, in the one case, to be blown up by an overweening conceit of their own importance; and, in the other, to be borne down by a timid distrust of their own abilities. Both dispositions are equally prejudicial to virtue the former so far as it tends not to excite emulation, and inspire to worthy actions; and the latter so far as it checks the native ardor of the soul, and ties it down to inglorious pursuits. But the same means will correct both. A larger commerce with the world, and a frequent viewing ourselves through a more impartial medium, compared to others of equal or greater merit, will bring down the one, and raise the other, to its just and proper standard. What was pride before, will then be converted into a sense of honour, and proper dignity of spirit; and what was timidity or self-distrust, will be turned into manly caution, and prudent fore-sight.

Time will not permit me to add more. Happy shall you be, if, by attending to such maxims as these,

you can pass your days, though not with the highest approbation of others, at least with full satisfaction to yourselves! Happy, if in the eve of life, when health and years and other joys decline, you can look back with conscious joy upon the unremitting tenor of an upright conduct; framed and uniformly supported to the last on these noble principles-Religion without hypocrisy, generosity without ostentation, justice tempered with goodness, and patriotism with every domestic virtue!

Ardently praying that this may be your lot, I shall take leave of you in the words of old Pollonius to his son

The friends you have, and their adoption try'd,
Grapple them to your soul with hooks of steel.
But do not dull your palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd unfledg'd comrade. Beware
Of enterance to a quarrel—

Give every man your ear, but few your voice.
Take each man's censure, but reserve your judgment.
This above all-to your own-selves be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

You cannot then be false to any man.

SHAKSPEARE.

These things I have sketched for you as the outlines of your duty. I pretend not to go farther. It is not my present business to offer a perfect plan for the conduct of life. Indeed my experience in it has such an arduous work. And I hope to be judged rather by what I have said, than by what could not properly be said, on such an occasion.

been too small for

As for the rest, I shall commit you to the best of masters. Be sure, in all things, to learn of Christ. In following him you cannot err. And to do so will be your interest, and your greatest glory, at a time when human wisdom shall fail, and of the things that now are, virtue-immortal virtue-shall be the great and chief survivor!

Farewel! my blessing season these things in you.

SHAKSPEARE.

THE END OF VOL. I.