is confidence, by placing his own
nephew in the English college, as also that of the bishop of Senlis, his
friend, and the son of one of his countrymen. I had the charge of
visiting them frequently. I used to send for them to dine with me on
every school holiday. If one of them had been guilty of a fault, the
punishment I inflicted was, that he should desire Mr. Butler to keep him
at home. But it almost always proved useless; he would himself bring me
the delinquent, and earnestly solicit his pardon; _Depend upon it_, said
he to me one day, _he will behave better for the future_. I asked him
what proof he had of it. _Sir_, answered he, in the presence of the lad,
_he has told me so_. I could not forbear smiling at such confidence in
the promises of a school-boy of ten years old; but was not long before I
repented. In a private conversation he observed to me, that one of the
most important rules in education is to impress children with a
persuasion that the vices we would keep them from, such as lying and
breaking one's word, are too shocking to be thought possible. A maxim
this worthy of the great Fenelon, his beloved model, and which common
tutors do not so much as surmise.

"Those three youths, our common functions of vicars-general, the
delightful company of your uncle, and the frequent need I had of drawing
from that source of light, carried me almost every day to the English
college. I could delineate to you, sir, his ordinary course of life in
the inward administration of that house; I could tell you of his
assiduousness at all the exercises; of his constant watchfulness; of the
public and private exhortations he made to his pupils, with that
persuasive eloquence we meet with in his writings; of his pious
solicitude for all their wants; and of their tender attachment to him.
His room was continually filled with them. He never put on the harsh end
threatening magisterial look: he was like a fond mother surrounded by
her children; or he was rather, according to the expression, the eagle
not disdaining to teach her young ones to soar, and carrying {037} them
on her expanded wings, to save them from a fatal fall. But I leave to
his worthy co-operators the satisfaction of detailing to you those
particulars, which I only transiently beheld, and which I never saw
without being affected. How many interesting anecdotes will they have to
acquaint you with!

"Every instant that Mr. Butler did not dedicate to the government