youthful mind cannot easily acquire such moral propensities has never
observed it, except when habit and example have already taught it
to be perverse. I speak from experience, and well know how much the
accounts I had read of Aristides, Epaminondas, Regulus, Cato, and
innumerable other great characters among the ancients inflamed my
imagination, and gave me a rooted love of virtue; so that even the
vulgarly supposed dry precepts of Seneca and Epictetus were perused
by me with delight; and with an emulous determination to put them in
practice.

My morality however was far from pure: it was such a mixture of
truth and error as was communicated to me by conversation, books,
and the incidents of life. From the glow of poetry I learnt many
noble precepts; but from the same source I derived the pernicious
supposition that to conquer countries and exterminate men are the
acts of heroes. Further instances would be superfluous: I mean only
to remark that, while I was gaining numerous truths, I was likewise
confirming myself in various prejudices; many of which it has been the
labour of years aided by the lessons of accident to eradicate; and
many more no doubt still remain undetected.

And now the period approached when I was to adventure forth into that
world of which I had experienced something, had heard so much, and
with which I was so impatient to become still better acquainted. The
weight of age began to press upon the rector and he had an apoplectic
fit, at which he was very seriously alarmed. He then thought it high
time to put his temporal affairs into the best order that his own
folly would admit; for, in consequence of his lawsuits, they were
so much in the hands and power of his friend, the lawyer, that
notwithstanding the plausibility and professions of the latter, he