alities as they pass along. It will be expected of you,
my son, that, as you are favored with superior advantages under the
instructive eye of a tender parent, your improvement should bear some
proportion to your advantages. Nothing is wanting with you but
attention, diligence, and steady application. Nature has not been
deficient.

"These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the
still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great
characters are formed. Would Cicero have shone so distinguished an
orator if he had not been roused, kindled, and inflamed by the tyranny
of Catiline, Verres, and Mark Antony? The habits of a vigorous mind are
formed in contending with difficulties. All history will convince you of
this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not
the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great
virtues. When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the
heart, then those qualities, which would otherwise lie dormant, wake
into life and form the character of the hero and statesman. War,
tyranny, and desolation are the scourges of the Almighty, and ought no
doubt to be deprecated. Yet it is your lot, my son, to be an eye-witness
of these calamities in your own native land, and, at the same time, to
owe your existence among a people who have made a glorious defense of
their invaded liberties, and who, aided by a generous and powerful ally,
with the blessing of Heaven, will transmit this inheritance to ages yet
unborn.

"Nor ought it to be one of the least of your incitements towards
exerting every power and faculty of your mind, that you have a parent
who has taken so large and active a share in this contest, and
discharged the trust reposed in him with so much satisfaction as to be
honored with the important embassy which at present calls him abroad.

"The strict and inviolable regard you have ever paid to truth gives me
pleasing hopes that you will not swerve from her dictates, but add
justice, fortitude, and every manly virtue which can adorn a good
citizen, do honor to your country, and render your parents supremely
happy, particularly your ever affectionate mother.

... "The only sure and permanent foundation of virtue is religion. Let
this important truth be engraven upon your heart. And also, that the
foundation of religion is the belief of the one only God, and a just
sense of his attributes, as a being infini