ty of offers and
contrariety of prospects.

I had however no time for long pauses of consideration; and therefore
soon resolved to accept the office of instructing a young nobleman in
the house of his father: I went to the seat at which the family then
happened to reside, was received with great politeness, and invited to
enter immediately on my charge. The terms offered were such as I should
willingly have accepted, though my fortune had allowed me greater
liberty of choice: the respect with which I was treated, flattered my
vanity; and perhaps the splendour of the apartments, and the luxury of
the table, were not wholly without their influence. I immediately
complied with the proposals, and received the young lord into my care.

Having no desire to gain more than I should truly deserve, I very
diligently prosecuted my undertaking, and had the satisfaction of
discovering in my pupil a flexible temper, a quick apprehension, and a
retentive memory. I did not much doubt that my care would, in time,
produce a wise and useful counsellor to the state, though my labours
were somewhat obstructed by want of authority, and the necessity of
complying with the freaks of negligence, and of waiting patiently for
the lucky moment of voluntary attention. To a man whose imagination was
filled with the dignity of knowledge, and to whom a studious life had
made all the common amusements insipid and contemptible, it was not very
easy to suppress his indignation, when he saw himself forsaken in the
midst of his lecture, for an opportunity to catch an insect, and found
his instructions debarred from access to the intellectual faculties, by
the memory of a childish frolick, or the desire of a new play-thing.

Those vexations would have recurred less frequently, had not his mamma,
by entreating at one time that he should be excused from a task as a
reward for some petty compliance, and withholding him from his book at
another, to gratify herself or her visitants with his vivacity, shewn
him that every thing was more pleasing and more important than
knowledge, and that study was to be endured rather than chosen, and was
only the business of those hours which pleasure left vacant, or
discipline usurped.

I thought it my duty to complain, in tender terms, of these frequent
avocations; but was answered, that rank and fortune might reasonably
hope for some indulgence; that the retardation of my pupil's progress
would not be imputed to any negl