ing. We were told that universal
benevolence was what first cemented society; we were taught to
consider all the wants of mankind as our own; to regard the _human
face divine_ with affection and esteem; he wound us up to be mere
machines of pity, and rendered us incapable of withstanding the
slightest impulse made either by real or fictitious distress: in a
word, we were perfectly instructed in the art of giving away thousands
before we were taught the more necessary qualifications of getting a
farthing.

"I cannot avoid imagining, that thus refined by his lessons out of all
my suspicion, and divested of even all the little cunning which nature
had given me, I resembled, upon my first entrance into the busy and
insidious world, one of those gladiators who were exposed with armour
in the amphitheatre at Rome. My father, however, who had only seen the
world on one side, seemed to triumph in my superior discernment;
though my whole stock of wisdom consisted in being able to talk like
himself upon subjects that once were useful, because they were then
topics of the busy world; but that now were utterly useless, because
connected with the busy world no longer.

"The first opportunity he had of finding his expectations
disappointed, was at the very middling figure I made in the
university: he had flattered himself that he should soon see me rising
into the foremost rank in literary reputation, but was mortified to
find me utterly unnoticed and unknown. His disappointment might have
been partly ascribed to his having over-rated my talents, and partly
to my dislike of mathematical reasonings, at a time when my
imagination and memory, yet unsatisfied, were more eager after new
objects, than desirous of reasoning upon those I knew. This did not,
however, please my tutors, who observed, indeed, that I was a little
dull, but at the same time allowed, that I seemed to be very
good-natured, and had no harm in me.

"After I had resided at college seven years, my father died, and left
me--his blessing. Thus shoved from shore without ill-nature to
protect, or cunning to guide, or proper stores to subsist me in so
dangerous a voyage, I was obliged to embark in the wide world at
twenty-two. But, in order to settle in life, my friends, advised (for
they always advise when they begin to despise us) they advised me, I
say, to go into orders.

"To be obliged to wear a long wig, when I liked a short one, or a
black coat, when I generally