and living himself on a sea of politics, was necessarily devoted to, and well understood, those subjects; and what he knew he had not failed to communicate to Fothergill, and Fothergill to me.

"Who knows," said my tutor, "but if you accomplish yourself in this interesting knowledge, you may one day be acquainted with this excellent and able nobleman, and bring it more to profit in the world than I did."

The thought struck instantaneously and deeply into my mind, and, without having any definite ideas upon it, it sharpened my industry, so that I acquired a very decent modicum of modern memoirs, politics, and diplomacy.

But even superior to this, in Fothergill's mind, was the inexhaustible, the never-ending, still beginning subject of human nature. "This, however," he said, "you can never acquire with closed doors."

He was here indeed, or would have been, a favourite disciple of Johnson, and would have walked Fleetstreet and the Strand with as much success as the sage. In pursuance of this, he laid before me a plan for the long vacations (especially as my cure of Bertha advanced) which was charming to my fancy.

"Go," said he, " pay your duty to your father and mother; shew and gladden them with your improvements; but do not stay too long. youths have ever homely wits.' the shapes of it you can master.

Home-keeping

See the world in all

You cannot do it en

grand seigneur; you cannot afford a post-chaise; and if you could, it would be the readiest way to de

feat your object. Perhaps even a horse might be objectionable. A philosopher on foot (or we will ennoble him with the name of a peripatetic) finds out most of life. For this purpose, indeed, a stage-coach is not despicable, but a private carriage will tell you nothing. A pedestrian expedition, however, is the thing. This I should have found out of myself (for I have often practised it) even without the glowing panegyric upon it by Rousseau, which, with a view to my proposal, I have looked out for you."

So saying, he put the volume into my hands, and I read, with much interest, the following passages:

"Jamais je n'ai tant pensé, tant existé, tant vécu, tant été moi, si j'ose ainsi dire, que dans ces voyages que j'ai faits seul et à pied. La marche a quelque chose qui anime mes idées; je ne puis presque penser quand je reste en place; il faut que mon corps soit en branle pour y mettre mon esprit. La vue de la campagne, la succession des aspects agréables, le grand air, le grand appétit, la bonne santé que je gagne en marchant; la liberté du cabaret, l'éloignement de tout ce qui me fait sentir mon dépendance, de tout ce qui me rappelle à ma situation, tout cela dégage mon âme, me donne une plus grande audace de penser, me jette en quelque sorte dans l'immensité des êtres, pour les combiner, les choisir, me les approprier sans gêne et sans crainte; je dispose en maître de la nature entière; mon cœur errant d'objet en objet, s'unit, s'identifie à ceux qui le flattent, s'entoure d'images charmantes, s'enivre de sentiments délicieux. Si pour les fixer je m'amuse à les décrire en moi-même,

quelle vigueur de pinceau, quelle fraîcheur de coloris, quelle énergie d'expression je leur donne !"

I was so warmed with this description, that it was like a match to a train, and I was impatient to begin the tour.

"I thought it would excite you, as it did me at your age," said Fothergill. "But recollect all you have to expect and encounter. At the same time, though there may be apparent difficulties (chiefly from false pride), common sense, and that spice of romance which you have in your composition, will bring you through."

But what said Jaques?

Did he not moralize this spectacle?

Oh! yes; into a thousand similes.

SHAKSPEARE.-As You Like It.

UNDER such a master, no wonder if my own similar disposition to observe, and to reason upon what he called the moral phenomena of our species, as well as upon things of a higher character, was cultivated and improved. In fact, I never knew a man so formed to conduct a youthful mind in all that was most precious to its welfare, whether worldly or religious. He drew lessons from every thing he saw or heard, of the most common, as well as of the rarest occurrence. In short, the world was his study, and all things that filled it, whether animate or inanimate, material or spiritual, were made subservient to this great end; and this disposition he did his utmost to encourage and cherish in me.

Such a preceptor was of inestimable value to me, and his mode of conveying instruction by familiar

colloquy was more lastingly impressive, as well as more pleasant, from its very familiarity, than a formal lecture ex cathedra. The lecture might be forgotten; the friendly conversation never.

Upon this principle, and inculcating a habit of keen observation as the best road to knowledge, he would ask frequently, at the close of the day, what I had been doing? what I had seen, and what remarked, particularly as to men's motives of action— whether by examining my own, or those of others?

When I have been surprised at this, and at being told I could know other men's motives by my own, he has cut me short by asking if I had never heard the searching phrase, "You judge of others by yourself." For he held, that a man well acquainted with his own heart might, from its workings alone (nay, its very weaknesses), get a fair acquaintance with that of another.

"Your own heart," he would say, "is so far like that of others, as to have passions and springs common to the rest of your kind. Whatever, therefore, is found there, may be found elsewhere; and though others may have what you have not, yet at least what you have must belong to human nature at large, though perhaps not to every individual who composes it."

Observing that I had grown more and more fond of walking without companions, except my own thoughts, he said, "If this proceed from still your cherishing what you ought to drive from your memory, you are perverse as well as imprudent."