University of Virginia Library

LETTER III.

After I had gone to bed last night, and lay tumbling
and tossing about, uneasy and unable to rest, my thoughts
running upon many an anxious subject, among which you
were not forgotten, I was relieved by the entrance of a servant,
who handed me your letter of the 9th, with some others.
But that relief was only temporary. My mind fixed itself
on your situation for the remainder of the night, and I have
determined to settle you at school at Winchester, unless (of
which I have no expectation) I shall find Hampden Sidney
very greatly altered for the better. At your time of life, my
son, I was even more inelegibly placed than you are, and
would have given worlds for quiet seclusion and books. I
never had either. You will smile when I tell you that the
first map that I almost ever saw was one of Virginia, when
I was nearly fifteen; and that I never (until the age of manhood)
possessed any treatise on geography, other than an obsolete
Gazetteer of Salmon, and my sole atlas were the five
maps, if you will honour them with that name, contained in
the Gazetteer, each not quite so big as this page, of the three
great eastern divisions, and two western ones, of the earth.
The best and only Latin dictionary that I ever owned, you
now have. I had a small Greek lexicon, bought with my own
pocket money, and many other books, acquired in the same
way, (from 16 to 20 years of age;) but these were merely
books of amusement. I never was with any preceptor, one
only excepted, (and he left the school after I had been there
about two months,) who would deserve to be called a Latin
or Greek scholar; and I never had any master of modern languages,
but an old Frenchman, (some gentleman valet, I suppose,)
who could neither write nor spell.

I mention these things, my child, that you may not be disheartened.
'Tis true, that I am a very ignorant man, for one

who is thought to have received a learned education. You
(I hope) will acquire more information, and digest it better.
There is an old proverb, "You cannot teach an old dog new
tricks." Yours is the time of life to acquire knowledge.
Hereafter you must use it; like the young, sturdy labourer,
who lays up, whilst he is fresh and vigorous, provision for
his declining age.

When I asked whether you had received the bank notes I
sent you, I did not mean to inquire how you had laid them
out. Don't you see the difference? From your not mentioning
that they had come to hand, (a careless omission; you
should break yourself of this habit,) and your cousin informing
me that she had not received two packets sent by the same
mail, I concluded that the notes were probably lost or embezzled.
Hence my inquiry after them. No, my son; whatever
cash I send you (unless for some special purpose) is
yours: you will spend it as you please, and I have nothing to
say to it. That you will not employ it in a manner that you
ought to be ashamed of, I have the fullest confidence. To
pry into such affairs would not only betray a want of that
confidence, and even a suspicion discreditable to us both, but
infringe upon your rights and independence. For, although
you are not of an age to be your own master, and independent
in all your actions, yet you are possessed of rights which it
would be tyranny and injustice to withhold, or invade. Indeed,
this independence, which is so much vaunted, and which
young people think consists in doing what they please, when
they grow up to man's estate, (with as much justice as the
poor negro thinks liberty consists in being supported in idleness,
by other people's labour,)—this independence is but a
name. Place us where you will,—along with our rights
there must coexist correlative duties,—and the more exalted
the station, the more arduous are these last. Indeed, as the
duty is precisely correspondent to the power, it follows that
the richer, the wiser, the more powerful a man is, the greater
is the obligation upon him to employ his gifts in lessening
the sum of human misery; and this employment constitutes

happiness, which the weak and wicked vainly imagine to consist
in wealth, finery, or sensual gratification. Who so miserable
as the bad Emperor of Rome? Who more happy than
Trajan and Antoninus? Look at the fretful, peevish, rich
man, whose senses are as much jaded by attempting to embrace
too much gratification, as the limbs of the poor post
horse are by incessant labour. [See the Gentlemen and
Basket-makers, and, indeed, the whole of Sandford and Merton.]

Do not, however, undervalue, on that account, the character
of the real gentleman, which is the most respectable
amongst men. It consists not of plate, and equipage, and rich
living, any more than in the disease which that mode of life
engenders; but in truth, courtesy, bravery, generosity, and
learning, which last, although not essential to it, yet does
very much to adorn and illustrate the character of the true
gentleman. Tommy Merton's gentlemen were no gentlemen,
except in the acceptation of innkeepers, (and the great
vulgar, as well as the small,) with whom he who rides in a
coach and six, is three times as great a gentleman as he who
drives a post-chaise and pair. Lay down this as a principle,
that truth is to the other virtues, what vital air is to
the human system. They cannot exist at all without it; and
as the body may live under many diseases, if supplied with
pure air for its consumption, so may the character survive
many defects, where there is a rigid attachment to truth.
All equivocation and subterfuge belong to falsehood, which
consists, not in using false words only, but in conveying false
impressions, no matter how; and if a person deceive himself,
and I, by my silence, suffer him to remain in that error, I am
implicated in the deception, unless he be one who has no right
to rely upon me for information, and, in that case, 'tis plain,
I could not be instrumental in deceiving him.

I send you two letters, addressed to myself, whilst at
school—of which I NOW sorely repent me I did not THEN
avail myself, (so far, at least, as my very ineligible situation
would admit.) Will you accept a little of my experience,

instead of buying some of your own at a very dear rate?—
and so, God bless you, my son.