University of Virginia Library

LETTER VII.

By this time, I trust, you have become familiarized, in
some degree, to your new situation, and to its restraints;
which, I hope, you will bear without murmuring, in the reflection
that your present self-denial will essentially contribute
to your future and permanent benefit. I have often regretted,
since I parted from you, that it was not my good
fortune, at your time of life, to be placed in a situation
equally eligible with what I conceive yours to be. You
have both, unless I am much deceived in you, a laudable
ambition to become learned and respectable men. Whether
such is to be your future character, respected and esteemed
by all good men, or whether you shall become mere vulgar
beings, whose only business is "fruges consumere," will

altogether depend upon your present exertions. You, my
dear Theodore, are too much straitened for time, to lose a
moment that can be profitably employed; and you, my dear
Buona, although younger by five years, must not conceive
that you have any to lose. Recollect that, two years ago,
you could master Cæsar, and that if you had continued to
progress, instead of falling back, which, from ill health and
the want of an instructer, you were compelled to do, you
might now be a finished Latin scholar, and somewhat of a
Grecian into the bargain. The man who thinks himself so
rich that he can afford to neglect his affairs and throw away
his money, is not far from want, however great his estate
may be. But time is, at once, the most valuable and most
perishable of all our possessions; when lost it never can be
retrieved.

I hope to hear from you both, very soon, and to learn
what you are doing, and how you like your situation. Your
mother, my dear Tudor, is not very well, but Sally is quite
so. Tom and Archibald Harrison have been with us, ever
since Friday evening. Beverley has not returned from Mr.
Randolph's. Dr. Robinson has, at last, brought his lady
home. We dined with them to-day.

Present me, very respectfully, to Dr. Haller. I write by
candle-light, and the moths are swarming around my pen,
and on the paper, so that you will have some difficulty, I
fear, to make out my writing.

God bless you, my dear boys! I am your affectionate
uncle and friend,