 the happiest of Men; blessed in my Family, in my Friends; with Health, Honours, Affluence; with the Power of gratifying every Wish that human Fancy can form! but alas! my Sensations are very far from affirming their Judgment of these Matters; and I will deserve your Advice, your Consolation, if you can afford it, by unbosoming myself to you without reserve.
When I reflect on my past Life, I look on many Parts of it with Repentance, and on the Whole with Regret. Not that I wish the return of Pleasures that I now despise, or of Years spent in a Manner that Virtue and common Sense must equally disapprove? but I am arrived at my Evening of Life, like a Sportsman who, having been in pursuit of Game all the Day, returns homeward, sorrowful, satigued, and disappointed. With every Advantage that could gratify either my Vanity or my Appetites, I cannot affirm that I ever tasted of true Enjoyment; and I now well perceive that I was kept from being miserable, merely by Amusement and Dissipation.
As I had the Misfortune to be born to Title and a vast Estate, all People respected, in me, the Possession of those Objects which they themselves were in pursuit of. I was consequently beset with Sycophants and Deceivers of all Sorts, and thereby, trained from my Infancy, to unavoidable Prejudices, Errors, and false Estimates of every Thing. I was not naturally ill-disposed, but I was perpetually seduced from all my better Tendencies.
Both my Parents died, before I arrived at those Years wherein our Laws allow of any Title to Discretion. I had but the one Brother, O that dear Brother, how many Sighs he has cost me! I was older than him by about seven Years, and this disparity of our Age, together with the elevating Notion of my Birthright, gave me the authoritative Airs of a Father, without a Father's Tenderness toward him. This mutually prevented that Cordiality, that Sympathy, as I may say, by which Brothers should be cemented during their Minority. And, when our Guardian, as I then judged, had so far betrayed his Trust, as to bind my Brother apprentice to a Trader, and thereby to deprive him of all Title to Gentility. I looked upon him as a Branch cut off from the Family-Tree, and, as my Thoughts about him were accompanied by Coldness or Disgust, I forbore to make any Enquiry concerning him.
I am apt to think, however, that he was not equally unnatural on his Part; but, hearing
