MY DEAR Boy,--With this I despatch the portmanteau you require to the
address that you give. I remember well Leopold Travers when he was in
the Guards,--a very handsome and a very wild young fellow. But he
had much more sense than people gave him credit for, and frequented
intellectual society; at least I met him very often at my friend
Campion's, whose house was then the favourite rendezvous of
distinguished persons. He had very winning manners, and one could not
help taking an interest in him. I was very glad when I heard he had
married and reformed. Here I beg to observe that a man who contracts a
taste for low company may indeed often marry, but he seldom reforms when
he does so. And, on the whole, I should be much pleased to hear that the
experience which has cost you forty-five pounds had convinced you that
you might be better employed than earning two, or even six shillings as
a day-labourer.

I have not given your love to your mother, as you requested. In fact,
you have placed me in a very false position towards that other author of
your eccentric being. I could only guard you from the inquisition of the
police and the notoriety of descriptive hand-bills by allowing my lady
to suppose that you had gone abroad with the Duke of Clairville and his
family. It is easy to tell a fib, but it is very difficult to untell
it. However, as soon as you have made up your mind to resume your normal
position among ladies and gentlemen, I should be greatly obliged if
you would apprise me. I don't wish to keep a fib on my conscience a
day longer than may be necessary to prevent the necessity of telling
another.

From what you say of Mr. Bowles's study of Man, and his inborn talent
for that scientific investigation, I suppose that he is a professed
Metaphysician, and I should be glad of his candid opinion upon the
Primary Basis of Morals, a subject upon which I have for three years
meditated the consideration of a critical paper. But having lately read
a controversy thereon between two eminent philosophers, in which each
accuses the other of not understanding him, I have resolved for the
present to leave the Basis in its unsettled condition.

You rather alarm me when you say you have had a narrow escape from
marriage. Should you, in order to increase the experience you set out
to acquire, decide on trying the effect of a Mrs. Chillingly upon your
nervous system, it would be well to let me know a little beforehand, so
that I