ing this primary object of your life
constantly before you, I should strongly recommend your making the
cultivation and improvement of your mental powers the subject of special
prayer at all the appointed seasons of prayer; at the same time, your
studies themselves should never be entered upon without prayer,--prayer,
that the evil mingled with all earthly things may fall powerless on your
sanctified heart,--prayer, that any improvement you obtain may make you
a more useful servant of the Lord your God--more persuasive and
influential in that great work which in different ways is appropriated
to all in their several spheres of action, viz. the high and holy office
of winning souls to Christ.[88]

FOOTNOTES:

[77] Coleridge.

[78] Assembly's Catechism.

[79] Plebeii videntur appellandi omnes philosophi qui a Platone et
Socrate et ab ea familia dissiderent.--CICERO, _Tuscul._ 1, 2, 3.

[80] L'Abbe Barthelemi.

[81] Quarterly Review.

[82] The critic who suffers his philosophy to reason away his pleasure
is not much wiser than a child who cuts open his drum to see what is
within it that causes the music.--_Edinburgh Review_.

[83] Ce n'est pas la victoire, c'est le combat qui fait le bonheur des
nobles coeurs.--_Montalembert_.

Si le Tout-puissant tenait dans une main la verite, et dans l'autre la
recherche de la verite, c'est la recherche que je lui demanderais.
--_Lessing_.

[84] Dryden, of Shakspeare.

[85] Miss Ferrier. Mrs. H.E.

[86] Napoleon's remark on Rollin's History.

[87] 1 Cor. x. 31.

[88] 1 Pet. iii. 1.

LETTER X.

AMUSEMENTS.

In addressing the following observations to you, I keep in mind the
peculiarity of your position,--a position which has made you, while
scarcely more than a child, independent of external control, and forced
you into the responsibilities of deciding thus early on a course of
conduct that may seriously affect your temporal and eternal interests.
More happy are those placed under the authority of strict parents, who
have already chosen and marked out for themselves a path to which they
expect their children strictly to adhere. The difficulties that may
still perplex the children of such parents are comparatively few: even
if the strictness of the authority over them be inexpedient and over
strained, it affords them a safeguard and a support for which they
cannot be too grateful; it preserves them from the responsibility of
acting for themselves at a ti