efactor and Regulus a hero.

Examine carefully, and reconsider all your notions of things; analyze
them, and discover their component parts, and see if habit and prejudice
are not the principal ones; weigh the matter upon which you are to form
your opinion, in the equal and impartial scales of reason. It is not to
be conceived how many people, capable of reasoning, if they would, live
and die in a thousand errors, from laziness; they will rather adopt the
prejudices of others, than give themselves the trouble of forming
opinions of their own. They say things, at first, because other people
have said them, and then they persist in them, because they have said
them themselves.

The last observation that I shall now mention of the Cardinal's is, "That
a secret is more easily kept by a good many people, than one commonly
imagines." By this he means a secret of importance, among people
interested in the keeping of it. And it is certain that people of
business know the importance of secrecy, and will observe it, where they
are concerned in the event. To go and tell any friend, wife, or mistress,
any secret with which they have nothing to do, is discovering to them
such an unretentive weakness, as must convince them that you will tell it
to twenty others, and consequently that they may reveal it without the
risk of being discovered. But a secret properly communicated only to
those who are to be concerned in the thing in question, will probably be
kept by them though they should be a good many. Little secrets are
commonly told again, but great ones are generally kept. Adieu!

LETTER LI

LONDON, September 20, O. S. 1748.

DEAR BOY: I wait with impatience for your accurate history of the
'Chevaliers Forte Epees', which you promised me in your last, and which I
take to be the forerunner of a larger work that you intend to give the
public, containing a general account of all the religious and military
orders of Europe. Seriously, you will do well to have a general notion of
all those orders, ancient and modern; both as they are frequently the
subjects of conversation, and as they are more or less interwoven with
the histories of those times. Witness the Teutonic Order, which, as soon
as it gained strength, began its unjust depredations in Germany, and
acquired such considerable possessions there; and the Order of Malta
also, which continues to this day its piracies upon the Infidels. Besides
one can go into no company in