es you, think seriously of
Australia. By coach, tomorrow, I will send you down all the best
books and reports on the subject; and I will get you what detailed
information I can from the Colonial Office. Having read these, and
thought over them dispassionately, spend some months yet among the
sheep-walks of Cumberland; learn all you can from all the shepherds
you can find,--from Thyrsis to Menalcas. Do more,--fit yourself in
every way for a life in the Bush, where the philosophy of the
division of labor is not yet arrived at. Learn to turn your hand
to everything. Be something of a smith, something of a carpenter,
--do the best you can with the fewest tools; make yourself an
excellent shot; break in all the wild horses and ponies you can
borrow and beg. Even if you want to do none of these things when
in your settlement, the having learned to do them will fit you for
many other things not now foreseen. De-fine-gentlemanize yourself
from the crown of your head to the sole of your foot, and become
the greater aristocrat for so doing; for he is more than an
aristocrat, he is a king, who suffices in all things for himself,--
who is his own master, because he wants no valetaille. I think
Seneca has expressed that thought before me; and I would quote the
passage, but the book, I fear, is not in the library of the House
of Commons. But now (cheers, by Jove! I suppose ---- is down. Ah!
it is so; and C--- is up, and that cheer followed a sharp hit at me.
How I wish I were your age, and going to Australia with you!)--But
now--to resume my suspended period--but now to the important
point,--capital. You must take that, unless you go as a shepherd,
and then good-by to the idea of L10,000 in ten years. So, you see,
it appears at the first blush that you must still come to your
father; but, you will say, with this difference, that you borrow
the capital with every chance of repaying it instead of frittering
away the income year after year till you are eight and thirty or
forty at least. Still, Pisistratus, you don't, in this, gain your
object at a leap; and my dear old friend ought not to lose his son
and his money too. You say you write to me as to your own father.
You know I hate, professions; and if you did not mean what you say,
you have offended me mortally. As a father, then, I take a
father's rights, and speak plainly. A fr