repair, your journey will be better or worse; though at best you will now
and then find some bad roads, and some bad inns. Take care, therefore, to
keep that necessary 'voiture' in perfect good repair; examine, improve,
and strengthen it every day: it is in the power, and ought to be the
care, of every man to do it; he that neglects it, deserves to feel, and
certainly will feel, the fatal effects of that negligence.

'A propos' of negligence: I must say something to you upon that subject.
You know I have often told you, that my affection for you was not a weak,
womanish one; and, far from blinding me, it makes me but more
quick-sighted as to your faults; those it is not only my right, but my
duty to tell you of; and it is your duty and your interest to correct
them. In the strict scrutiny which I have made into you, I have (thank
God) hitherto not discovered any vice of the heart, or any peculiar
weakness of the head: but I have discovered laziness, inattention, and
indifference; faults which are only pardonable in old men, who, in the
decline of life, when health and spirits fail, have a kind of claim to
that sort of tranquillity. But a young man should be ambitious to shine,
and excel; alert, active, and indefatigable in the means of doing it;
and, like Caesar, 'Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum.' You
seem to want that 'vivida vis animi,' which spurs and excites most young
men to please, to shine, to excel. Without the desire and the pains
necessary to be considerable, depend upon it, you never can be so; as,
without the desire and attention necessary to please, you never can
please. 'Nullum numen abest, si sit prudentia,' is unquestionably true,
with regard to everything except poetry; and I am very sure that any man
of common understanding may, by proper culture, care, attention, and
labor, make himself whatever he pleases, except a good poet. Your
destination is the great and busy world; your immediate object is the
affairs, the interests, and the history, the constitutions, the customs,