I must not close this letter without adverting to an error into which
those of your sanguine temperament would be the most likely to fall.

You will, perhaps--for it is a common progress--run from one extreme to
another, and from having expended too large a proportion of your income
on personal decoration, you may next withdraw even necessary attention
from it. "All must be given to the poor," will be the decision of your
own impulses and of over-strained views of duty.

This, however, is, in an opposite direction, quitting the station of
life in which God has placed you, as much as those do who indulge in an
expenditure of double their income. Your dressing according to your
station in life is as much in accordance with the will of God
concerning you, as your living in a drawing-room instead of a kitchen,
in a spacious mansion instead of a peasant's cottage. Besides, as you
are situated, there is another consideration with respect to your dress
which must not be passed over in silence. The allowance you receive is
expressly for the purpose of enabling you to dress properly, suitably,
and respectably; and if you do not in the first place fulfil the purpose
of the donor, you are surely guilty of a species of dishonesty. You have
no right to indulge personal feeling, or gratify a mistaken sense of
duty, by an expenditure of money for a different purpose from that for
which it was given to you; nor even, were your money exclusively your
own, would you have a right to disregard the opinions of your friends by
dressing in a different manner from them, or from what they consider
suitable for you. If you thus err, they will neither allow you to
exercise any influence over them, nor will they be at all prejudiced in
favour of the, it may be, stricter religious principles which you
profess, when they find them lead to unnecessary singularity, and to