and vivacity entirely fascinating.

After all that I have written, I must again repeat what I began
with,--that you are to try each different mode of study for yourself,
and that the advice of others will be of use to you only when you have
assimilated it with your own mind, testing it by your own practice, and
giving it the fair trial of _patient_ perseverance.

I ought perhaps, before I close this letter, to make some apology for
recommending, as a part of your course of study, either Rollin or Hume,
one because he is "_trop bon homme_,"[86] the other because he is not
"_bon_" in any sense of the word. My apology, or rather my reason, will,
however, be only a repetition of that which I have said before, viz.
that I should wish you to read history strictly, and merely, as a story,
and to form your _own_ philosophic and religious opinions previously,
and from other sources.

So many valuable and important histories, so many necessary books on
every subject, have been written by the professed infidel, as well as by
the practical forgetter of God, that you must prepare yourself for a
constant state of intellectual watchfulness, as to all the various
opinions suggested by the different authors you study. It is not their
opinions you want, but their facts. Most standard histories, even Hume
and Voltaire, tell truth as to all leading facts: after half-a-century
or so of filtration, truth becomes purified from contemporary passions
and prejudices, and can be easily got at without any importantly
injurious mixture.

It was to mark my often-repeated wish that you should _philosophize_ for
yourself, that I have omitted the names of Guizot and Hallam in the list