deny himself the pleasure he found in having me about him, instead of sending me out to a boardingschool, he offered the curate of the parish ten pounds a year and his board to become my tutor.

This gentleman, who was in years, and had lately buried his wife, accepted the employment, but refused the salary: the work of education, he said, would agreeably fill his intervals of leisure, and happily coincide with the duties of his function: but he observed that his curacy, which was thirty pounds a year, and had long subsisted him when he had a family, would make him wealthy now he was a single man; and therefore he insisted to pay for his board: to this my father, with whatever reluctance, was obliged to consent. At the age of six years I began to read my Accidence under my preceptor; and at fifteen had gone through the Latin and Greek Classics. But the languages were not all that I learned of this gentleman; besides other science of less importance, he taught me the theory of Christianity by his precepts, and the practice by his example.

As his temper was calm and steady, the influence which he had acquired over me was unlimited: he was never capriciously severe; so that I regarded his displeasure not as an effect of his infirmity, but of my own fault: he discovered so much affection in the pleasure with which he commended, and in the tender concern with which he reproved me, that I loved him as a father; and his devotion though rational and manly, was yet so habitual and fervent, that I reverenced him as a saint. I found even my passions controlled by an awe which his presence impressed; and by a constant attention to his doctrine and his life, I acquired such a sense of my connexion with the invisible world, and such a conviction of the consciousness of Deity to all my thoughts, that every inordinate wish was secretly suppressed, and

my conduct regulated by the most scrupulous circumspection.

My father thought he had now taken sufficient care of my education, and therefore began to expect that I should assist in overlooking his servants, and managing his farm, in which he intended I should succeed him: but my preceptor, whose principal view was not my temporal advantage, told him, that as a farmer, great part of my learning would be totally useless; and the only way to make me serviceable to mankind, in proportion to the knowledge I had acquired, would be to send me to the university, that at a proper time I might take orders. But my father, besides that he was still unwilling to part with me, had probably many reasons against my entering the world in a cassock: such, however, was the deference which he paid to my tutor, that he had almost implicitly submitted to his determination, when a relation of my mother's, who was an attorney of great practice in the Temple, came to spend part of the long vacation at our house, in consequence of invitations which had been often repeated during an absence of many years.

'My father thought that an opportunity of consulting how to dispose of me, with a man so well acquainted with life, was not to be lost; and perhaps he secretly hoped, that my preceptor would give up his opinion as indefensible, if a person of the lawyer's experience should declare against it. My cousin was accordingly made umpire in the debate; and after he had heard the arguments on both sides, he declared against my becoming a farmer: he said, it would be an act of injustice to bury my parts and learning in the obscurity of rural life; because, if produced to the world, they would probably be rewarded with wealth and distinction. My preceptor imagined the question was now finally determined in his favour;

and being obliged to visit one of his parishioners that was sick, he gave me a look of congratulation as he went out, and I perceived his cheek glow with a flush of triumph, and his eye sparkle with tears of delight.

But he had no sooner left the room, than my cousin gave the conversation another turn; he told my father, that though he had opposed his making me a farmer, he was not an advocate for my becoming a parson; for that to make a young fellow a parson, without being able to procure him a living, was to make him a beggar: he then made some witty reflections on the old gentleman who was just gone out; "Nobody," said he, "could question his having been put to a bad trade, who considered his circumstances now he had followed it forty years." And after some other sprightly sallies, which though they made my father laugh, made me tremble, he clapped him upon the shoulder, " If you have a mind your boy shall make a figure in life, old gentleman," says he, put him clerk to me; my Lord-chancellor King was no better than the son of a country shopkeeper; and my master gave a person of much greater eminence many a half-crown when he was an attorney's clerk in the next chambers to mine. What say you? shall I take him up with me or no?" My father, who had listened to this proposal with great eagerness, as soon as my cousin had done speaking, cried, “A match;" and immediately gave him his hand, in token of his consent. Thus the bargain was struck, and my fate determined before my tutor came back.

It was in vain that he afterward objected to the character of my new master, and expressed the most dreadful apprehensions at my becoming an attorney's clerk, and entering into the society of wretches who had been represented to him, and perhaps not un

justly, as the most profligate upon earth: they do not, indeed, become worse than others, merely as clerks; but as young persons, who with more money to spend in the gratification of appetite, are sooner than others abandoned to their own conduct: for though they are taken from under the protection of a parent, yet being scarce considered as in a state of servitude, they are not sufficiently restrained by the authority of a master. My father had conceived of my cousin as the best-natured man in the world, and probably was intoxicated with the romantic hope, of living to see me upon the bench in Westminster-hall, or of meeting me on the circuit, lolling in my own coach, and attended by a crowd of the inferior instruments of justice. He was not, therefore, to be moved either by expostulation or entreaty; and I set out with my cousin on horseback, to meet the stage at a town within a few miles, after having taken leave of my father, with a tenderness that melted us both; and received from the hoary saint his last instructions and benediction, and at length the parting embrace, which was given with the silent ardour of unutterable wishes, and repeated with tears that could no longer be suppressed or concealed.

When we were seated in the coach, my cousin began to make himself merry with the regret and discontent that he perceived in my countenance at leaving a cow-house, a hogsty, and two old graypates, who were contending whether I should be buried in a farm or a college. I, who had never heard either my father or my tutor treated with irreverence, could not conceal my displeasure and resentment but he still continued to rally my country simplicity with many allusions which I did not then understand, but which greatly delighted the rest of the company. The fourth day brought us to our journey's end, and my master, as soon as we reached

his chambers, shook me by the hand, and bid me welcome to the Temple.

⚫ He had been some years a widower, and his only child, a daughter, being still at a boarding-school, his family consisted only of a man and maid-servant and myself: for though he had two hired clerks, yet they lodged and boarded themselves. The horrid. lewdness and profaneness of these fellows terrified and disgusted me; nor could I believe that my master's property and interest could be safely intrusted with men who, in every respect, appeared to be so destitute of virtue and religion: I, therefore, thought it my duty to apprize him of his danger; and accordingly, one day when we were at dinner, I communicated my suspicion, and the reason upon which it was founded. The formal solemnity with which I introduced this conversation, and the air of importance which I gave to my discovery threw him into a violent fit of laughter, which struck me dumb with confusion and astonishment. As soon as he recovered himself, he told me, that though his clerks might use some expressions that I had not been accustomed to hear, yet he believed them to be very honest; and that he placed more confidence in them, than he would in a formal prig, of whom he knew nothing but that he went every morning and evening to prayers, and said grace before and after meat; that as to swearing they meant no harm; and as he did not doubt but that every young fellow liked a girl, it was better they should joke about it than be hypocritical and sly not that he would be thought to suspect my integrity, or to blame me for practices. which he knew to be merely the effects of the bigotry and superstition in which I had been educated, and not the disguises of cunning, or the subterfuges of guilt.

'I was greatly mortified at my cousin's behaviour