nd, open air is life to the student, change of scene is
mental vigour to an enquiring, active, and eager spirit; and thus the
feeble boy invigorated himself for the most strenuous labours of the
man, and laid the foundation for a career of eminent usefulness and
public honour for nearly half a century of the most stirring period of
the modern world.

Some of his letters touch, in his style of grave humour, on these
pleasant wanderings.--"You have compared me, for my rambling
disposition, to the sun. Sincerely, I can't help finding a likeness
myself, for they say the sun sends down much the same influences
whenever he comes into the same signs. Now I am influenced to shake
off my laziness, and write to you at the same time of the year, and
from the same west country I wrote my last in. Since I had your letter
I have often shifted the scene. I spent part of the winter, that is
the term time, in London, and part in Croydon in Surrey. About the
beginning of the summer, finding myself attacked with my old
complaints, I went once more to Bristol, and found the same benefit."
Of his adventures at Monmouth, he says they would almost compose a
novel, and of a more curious kind than is generally issued from the
press. He and his relative formed the topic of the town, both while
they were there and after they left it. "The most innocent scheme,"
said he, "they guessed, was that of fortune-hunting; and when they saw
us quit the town without wives, the lower sort sagaciously judged us
spies to the French king. What is much more odd is, that here my
companion and I puzzled them as much as we did at Monmouth, [he was
then at Turlaine in Wiltshire,] for this is a place of very great
trade in making fine cloths, in which they employ a great number of
hands. The first conjecture, for they could not fancy how any other
sort of people could spend so much of their time at books; but finding
that we receive from time to time a good many letters, they conclude
us merchants. They at last began to apprehend that we were spies from
Spain on their trade." Still they appeared mysterious; and the old
woman in whose lodgings they lived, paid them the rather ambiguous
compliment of saying, "I believe that you be gentlemen, but I ask no
questions." "What makes the thing still better," says Burke, "about
the same time we came hither, arrived a little parson equally a
stranger; but he spent a good part of his time in shooting and other
country amusemen