the manners and opinions of the world
require for your son. Gentlemen in your situation of life are accustomed
to divide the world into two general classes; those who are persons of
fashion, and those who are not. The first class contains everything that
is valuable in life; and therefore their manners, their prejudices,
their very vices, must be inculcated upon the minds of children, from
the earliest period of infancy; the second comprehends the great body of
mankind, who, under the general name of the vulgar, are represented as
being only objects of contempt and disgust, and scarcely worthy to be
put on a footing with the very beasts that contribute to the pleasure
and convenience of their superiors."

Mr Merton could not help interrupting Mr Barlow here, to assure him
that, though there was too much truth in the observation, yet he must
not think that either he or Mrs Merton carried things to that
extravagant length; and that, although they wished their son to have the
manners of a man of fashion, they thought his morals and religion of
infinitely more consequence.

"If you think so, sir," said Mr Barlow, "it is more than a noble lord
did, whose written opinions are now considered as the oracles of polite
life, and more than, I believe, most of his admirers do at this time.
But if you allow what I have just mentioned to be the common
distinctions of genteel people, you must at one glance perceive how
little I must be qualified to educate a young gentleman intended to move
in that sphere; I, whose temper, reason, and religion, equally combine
to make me reject the principles upon which those distinctions are
founded. The Christian religion, though not exclusively, is,
emphatically speaking, the religion of the poor. Its first ministers
were taken from the lower orders of mankind, and to the lower orders of
mankind was it first proposed; and in this, instead of feeling myself
mortified or ashamed, I am the more inclined to adore the wisdom and
benevolence of that Power by whose command it was first promulgated.
Those who engross the riches and advantages of this world are too much
employed with their pleasures and ambition to be much interested about
any system, either of religion or of morals; they too frequently feel a
species of habitual intoxication, which excludes every serious thought,
and makes them view with indifference everything but the present moment.
Those, on the contrary, to whom all the hardships and