III. Conversation 27

IV. Against yielding to the Influence of Numbers 45

V. Improvement of Time 55

VI. Punctuality 72

VII. Amusements 85

VIII. Expenses, and running into Debt 99

IX. Temperance 114

X. English Reading 137

LETTER I.

SENSE OF RELIGION.

MY DEAR NEPHEW,

It gives me sincere pleasure to hear that you have actually become a
member of the University of Oxford. This satisfaction, perhaps, may in
some degree be attributed to the pleasing recollection of my own Oxford
life, but certainly it arises principally from anticipation of the
substantial benefits which you, I trust, will derive from your connexion
with that seat of learning. At the same time, I will own that my
satisfaction is not entirely unmixed with something like apprehension.
An University education has many and great advantages, but it also is
attended with many temptations;--temptations to which too many young men
have yielded, sometimes to the great injury of their character, and the
utter ruin of all their future prospects.

In fact, you are now entering upon the most important period--the
_turning point_--of your whole life. You have become, in a great
measure, your own master. For though you will be under a certain degree
of discipline and _surveillance_, yet in a multiplicity of cases you
will have to act for yourself--to take your own line. You will have to
contend against the allurements of pleasure and dissipation, and you
have just reached the age when the natural passions and appetites become
most impatient of restraint. At the same time, you will be exposed to
the influence both of the example and of the solicitations of lively
young men, who will try to carry you along with them in their career of
thoughtlessness and folly, and who will think it strange, and _show_ you
that they think it strange, if you run not with them to the same excess
of riot. Against all these moral trials and temptations, your best
safeguard will be found in a strong sense of religion, kept habitually
present to your mind. You must endeavour, according to the language of
Scripture--(and in writing to you I shall always gladly make use of the
very words of Scripture, when they suit