ference, and submission of your own lights to theirs, you will particularly practise that first and greatest rule for pleasing in conversation, as well as for drawing instruction and improvement from the company of one's superiors in age and knowledge, namely, to be a patient, attentive, and well-bred hearer, and to answer with modesty to deliver your own opinions sparingly and with proper diffidence; and if you are forced to desire farther information or explanation upon a point, to do it with proper apologies for the trouble you give: or if obliged to differ, to do it with all possible candour, and an unprejudiced desire to find and ascertain truth, with an entire indifference to the side on which that truth is to be found. There is likewise a particular attention required to contradict with good manners; such as, begging pardon, begging leave to doubt, and such like phrases. Pythagoras enjoined his scholars an absolute silence for a long noviciate. I am far from: approving such a taciturnity: but I highly recommend the end and intent of Pythagoras's injunction; which is to dedicate the first parts of life more to hear and learn, in order to collect materials, out of which to form opinions founded on proper lights, and well-examined sound principles, than to be presuming, prompt, and flippant. in hazarding one's own slight crude notions of things; and thereby exposing the nakedness and emptiness of the mind, like a house opened to company before it is fitted either with necessaries, or any ornaments for their reception and entertainment. And not only will this disgrace follow from such temerity and presumption, but a more serious danger is sure to ensue, that is, the embracing errors for truths, prejudices for principles; and when that is once done, (no matter how vainly and weakly,) the adhering perhaps to false and dangerous notions, only because one has declared. for them, and submitting, for life, the understanding and conscience to 3 a yoke of base and servile prejudices, vainly taken up and obstinately retained. This will never be your danger; but I thought it not amiss to offer these reflections to your thoughts. As to your manner of behaving towards these unhappy young gentlemen you describe, let it be manly and easy; decline their parties with civility; retort their raillery with raillery, always tempered with good breeding: if they banter your regularity, order, decency, and love of study, banter in return their neglect of them; and venture to own frankly, that you came to Cambridge to learn what you can, not to follow what they are pleased to call pleasure. In short, let your external behaviour to them be as full of politeness and ease as your inward estimation of them is full of pity, mixed with contempt. I come now to the part of the advice I have to offer to you, which most nearly concerns your welfare, and upon which every good and honourable purpose of your life will assuredly turn; I mean the keep ing up in your heart the true sentiments of religion. If you are not right towards God, you can never be so towards man: the noblest sentiment of the human breast is here brought to the test. Is gratitude in the number of a man's virtues? if it be, the highest benefactor demands |