the gift of fortune, every man, or every young man,
takes it for granted that he is a favourite, and that it will be
bestowed upon him. The profits of commerce and of agriculture, the
profits of every art and profession, can be estimated with tolerable
accuracy; the value of activity, application and abilities, can be
respectively measured by some certain standard. Modest, or even
prudent people, will scruple to rate themselves in all of these
qualifications superior to their neighbours; but every man will allow
that, in point of good fortune, at any game of chance, he thinks
himself upon a fair level with every other competitor.

When a young man deliberates upon what course of life he shall follow,
the patient drudgery of a trade, the laborious mental exertions
requisite to prepare him for a profession, must appear to him in a
formidable light, compared with the alluring prospects presented by an
adventuring imagination. At this time of life, it will be too late
suddenly to change the taste; it will be inconvenient, if not
injurious, to restrain a young man's inclinations by force or
authority; it will be imprudent, perhaps fatally imprudent, to leave
them uncontroled. Precautions should therefore be taken long before
this period, and the earlier they are taken, the better. It is not
idle refinement to assert, that the first impressions which are made
upon the imagination, though they may be changed by subsequent
circumstances, yet are discernible in every change, and are seldom
entirely effaced from the mind, though it may be difficult to trace
them through all their various appearances. A boy, who at seven years
old, longs to be Robinson Crusoe, or Sinbad the sailor, may at
seventeen, retain the same taste for adventure and enterprise, though
mixed so as to be less discernible, with the incipient passions of
avarice and ambition; he has the same dispositions modified by a
slight knowledge of real life, and guided by the manners and
conversation of his friends and acquaintance. Robinson Crusoe and
Sinbad, will no longer be his favourite heroes; but he will now admire
the soldier of fortune, the commercial adventurer, or the nabob, who
has discovered in the east the secret of Aladdin's wonderful lamp; and
who has realized the treasures of Aboulcasem.

The history of realities, written in an entertaining manner, appears
not only better suited to the purposes of education, but also more
agreeable to young people than