kept alive and be brought into
play, in subordination and subservience to the _great end_, they are
cherished as useful, and revered as laudable; and whatever austerity and
rigour you may impute to my character, there are few more susceptible of
personal regards than I am.

You cannot know, till _you_ are what _I_ am, what deep, what
all-absorbing interest I have in the success of my tutorship on this
occasion. Most joyfully would I embrace a thousand deaths, rather than
that you should prove a recreant. The consequences of any failure in
your integrity will, it is true, be fatal to yourself: but there are
some minds, of a generous texture, who are more impatient under ills
they have inflicted upon others, than of those they have brought upon
themselves; who had rather perish, themselves, in infamy, than bring
infamy or death upon a benefactor.

Perhaps of such noble materials is your mind composed. If I had not
thought so, you would never have been an object of my regard, and
therefore, in the motives that shall impel you to fidelity, sincerity,
and perseverance, some regard to my happiness and welfare will, no
doubt, have place.

And yet I exact nothing from you on this score. If your own safety be
insufficient to controul you, you are not fit for us. There is, indeed,
abundant need of all possible inducements to make you faithful. The task
of concealing nothing from me must be easy. That of concealing every
thing from others must be the only arduous one. The _first_ you can
hardly fail of performing, when the exigence requires it, for what
motive can you possibly have to practice evasion or disguise with
me? You have surely committed no crime; you have neither robbed, nor
murdered, nor betrayed. If you have, there is no room for the fear of
punishment or the terror of disgrace to step in, and make you hide your
guilt from me. You cannot dread any further disclosure, because I can
have no interest in your ruin or your shame: and what evil could
ensue the confession of the foulest murder, even before a bench of
magistrates, more dreadful than that which will inevitably follow the
practice of the least concealment to me, or the least undue disclosure
to others?

You cannot easily conceive the emphatical solemnity with which this was
spoken. Had he fixed piercing eyes on me while he spoke; had I perceived
him watching my looks, and labouring to penetrate my secret thoughts, I
should doubtless have been ruined: but h