rning upon itself.

What has been said is a mere sketch, and that only of a part of the
interesting country into which we have been led; but my correspondent
will be able to enter the paths that have been pointed out. Should he do
this and advance steadily for a while, he needs not fear any deviations
from the truth which will be finally injurious to him. He will not long
have his admiration fixed upon unworthy objects; he will neither be
clogged nor drawn aside by the love of friends or kindred, betraying his
understanding through his affections; he will neither be bowed down by
conventional arrangements of manners producing too often a lifeless
decency; nor will the rock of his spirit wear away in the endless
beating of the waves of the world; neither will that portion of his own
time, which he must surrender to labours by which his livelihood is to
be earned or his social duties performed, be unprofitable to himself
indirectly, while it is directly useful to others; for that time has
been primarily surrendered through an act of obedience to a moral law
established by himself, and therefore he moves them also along the orbit
of perfect liberty.

Let it be remembered, that the advice requested does not relate to the
government of the more dangerous passions, or to the fundamental
principles of right and wrong as acknowledged by the universal
conscience of mankind. I may therefore assure my youthful correspondent,
if he will endeavour to look into himself in the manner which I have
exhorted him to do, that in him the wish will be realized, to him in due
time the prayer granted, which was uttered by that living teacher of
whom he speaks with gratitude as of a benefactor, when in his character
of philosophical poet, having thought of morality as implying in its
essence voluntary obedience, and producing the effect of order, he
transfers in the transport of imagination, the law of moral to physical
natures, and having contemplated, through the medium of that order, all
modes of existence as subservient to one spirit, concludes his address
to the power of duty in the following words:

To humbler functions, awful power!
I call thee: I myself commend
Unto thy guidance from this hour;
Oh, let my weakness have an end!
Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice;
The confidence of reason give,
And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live!

III. OF EDUCATION.

(_