 whose knowledge of men and manners had not rendered his notions less contracted, imagined we could no where so effectually imbibe the first sentiments of virtue, as under the tuition of a man, whose purity was such, that he seemed to know little difference between an error and a crime. The system by which we were educated, was of course strict in the extreme; but the austere principles that had been early implanted in our minds, our companions at College found it no difficult matter to extirpate; and a slight acquaintance with society, soon convinced us, that

we were incapable of adhering to habits, absurb in themselves, and of no assistance either to religion or morality. Having once deviated from prejudices, however weak, which the mind has been accustomed to regard as sacred, to stop exactly at the proper limits of rectitude requires a portion of steady fortitude even superior to that which preserves us firm in our first impressions; the reformation is indeed but too often followed by a total revolution of principle, and even virtue herself is not unfrequently overturned under the appellation of confined ideas.— Such, at least, was in part the change my mind underwent after having resided some time at the university.
When the part of my education to be there attained was completed, I set out on my travels; and immediately after my return from the Continent, that busy period of my life commenced, the bitter recollection of which almost

incapacitates me from relating the many painful occurrences it produced.
My brother had chosen a military life, and we had not met during three years which I spent abroad. We kept up a constant correspondence however; and he was with his regiment in Ireland at the time of my arrival in England. I received a letter from him soon after, intimating his having lately married a young lady, of whom he seemed passionately enamoured, but who did not possess any of those advantages, either of family or fortune, likely to reconcile my father to a step in which he had not been consulted. Conscious how tenacious my Lord ever had been of his authority, added to an invincible prepossession, which he had long entertained against the Irish nation, my brother, in the height of his nuptial felicity, could not avoid suffering the severest apprehensions for the consequences of

his imprudence; and besought me to exert all my influence with my father, to soften his wrath at this unexpected intelligence.
My endeavours, however, were on this head ineffectual; my Lord was overwhelmed with a rage that did not evaporate with its violence, but subsided into a determined, inflexible resentment; by which he
