labour of mine had
contributed to acquire; and that he, who had thus distinguished me,
might hope to end his life without a total frustration of those
blessings, which, whatever be their real value, he had sought with so
much diligence, and purchased with so many vicissitudes of danger and
fatigue.

He, indeed, left me no reason to repine at his recovery, for he was
willing to accustom me early to the use of money, and set apart for my
expenses such a revenue as I had scarcely dared to image. I can yet
congratulate myself that fortune has seen her golden cup once tasted
without inebriation. Neither my modesty nor prudence was overwhelmed by
affluence; my elevation was without insolence, and my expense without
profusion. Employing the influence which money always confers, to the
improvement of my understanding, I mingled in parties of gaiety, and in
conferences of learning, appeared in every place where instruction was
to be found, and imagined that, by ranging through all the diversities
of life, I had acquainted myself fully with human nature, and learned
all that was to be known of the ways of men.

It happened, however, that I soon discovered how much was wanted to the
completion of my knowledge, and found that, according to Seneca's
remark, I had hitherto seen the world but on one side. My patron's
confidence in his increase of strength tempted him to carelessness and
irregularity; he caught a fever by riding in the rain, of which he died
delirious on the third day. I buried him without any of the heir's
affected grief or secret exultation; then preparing to take a legal
possession of his fortune, I opened his closet, where I found a will,
made at his first arrival, by which my father was appointed the chief
inheritor, and nothing was left me but a legacy sufficient to support me
in the prosecution of my studies.

I had not yet found such charms in prosperity as to continue it by any
acts of forgery or injustice, and made haste to inform my father of the
riches which had been given him, not by the preference of kindness, but
by the delays of indolence and cowardice of age. The hungry family flew
like vultures on their prey, and soon made my disappointment publick, by
the tumult of their claims, and the splendour of their sorrow.

It was now my part to consider how I should repair the disappointment. I
could not but triumph in my long list of friends, which comprised almost
every name that power or knowledge ent