to the fond dreams of this restless and ardent passion, mankind are
indebted for most of the arts and sciences, while its disappointments
have given birth to philosophy, which teaches us to bear up under
misfortune. Love, thus, the general link of all beings, becomes the
great spring of society, by inciting us to knowledge as well as to
pleasure.

Paul found little satisfaction in the study of geography, which, instead
of describing the natural history of each country, gave only a view of
its political divisions and boundaries. History, and especially modern
history, interested him little more. He there saw only general and
periodical evils, the causes of which he could not discover; wars
without either motive or reason; uninteresting intrigues; with nations
destitute of principle, and princes void of humanity. To this branch
of reading he preferred romances, which, being chiefly occupied by the
feelings and concerns of men, sometimes represented situations similar
to his own. Thus, no book gave him so much pleasure as Telemachus, from
the pictures it draws of pastoral life, and of the passions which are
most natural to the human breast. He read aloud to his mother and Madame
de la Tour, those parts which affected him most sensibly; but sometimes,
touched by the most tender remembrances, his emotion would choke his
utterance, and his eyes be filled with tears. He fancied he had found
in Virginia the dignity and wisdom of Antiope, united to the misfortunes
and the tenderness of Eucharis. With very different sensations he
perused our fashionable novels, filled with licentious morals and
maxims, and when he was informed that these works drew a tolerably
faithful picture of European society, he trembled, and not without some
appearance of reason, lest Virginia should become corrupted by it, and
forget him.