awful bars. So, macte tuâ virtute! go on and prosper in your glorious and happy career: not forgetting to walk an hour briskly every morning and evening, to fortify the nerves. I wish to hear, in some little time, of the progress you shall have made in the course of reading chalked out. Adieu.

Your ever affectionate uncle.

Lady Hester desires her best com

pliments to you.

LETTER XIV.

MY DEAR NEPHEW,

Stowe, July 24, 1755.

I AM just leaving this place

to go to Wotton; but I will not lose the post, though I have time but for one line. I am extremely happy that you can stay at your college, and pursue the prudent and glorious resolution of employing your present moments with a view to the future. May your noble and generous love

of virtue pay you with the sweet rewards of a self-approving heart and an applauding country! and may I enjoy the true satisfaction of seeing your fame and happiness, and of thinking that I may have been fortunate enough to have contributed, in any small degree, to do common justice to kind nature by a suitable education! I am no very good judge of the question concerning the books; I believe they are your own in the same sense that your wearing apparel is. I would retain them, and leave the candid and equitable Mr. *** to plan, with the honest Mr. ***, schemes of perpetual vexation. As to the persons just mentioned, I trust

,

that you bear about you a mind and heart much superior to such malice: and that you are as little capable of resenting it, with any sensations but those of cool decent contempt, as you are of fearing the consequences. of such low efforts. As to the caution money I think you have done well. The case of the chambers, I conceive, you likewise apprehend rightly. Let me know in your next what these two articles require you to pay down, and how far your present cash is exhausted, and I will direct Mr. Campbell to give you credit accordingly. Believe me, my dear Nephew, truly happy to be of use to you.

Your ever affectionate.

LETTER XV.

Wotton, Aug. 7, 1755.

MY DEAR NEPHEW,

I HAVE only time at present to let you know I am setting out for London; when I return to Sunning Hill, which I propose to do in a few days, I shall have considered the question about a letter to ****, and will send you my thoughts upon it. As to literature, I know you are not idle, under so many and so strong