on the operatical denouèment of your Italian comedie; and think that even Metastasio has not wound up any of his catastrophes with more poetical justice, than you have shewn in the disposal of your dramatis personae.
But the most enviable part of your good fortune, is the having met with such a friend as Sir George Cleveland, whose knowlege of the world, joined to an excellent understanding, and an amiable heart, (all which he has shewn in the management of your affair with Margarita) must render him at once an object of your

affection and respect; and afford you an opportunity of benefiting, both by his precepts and example.
I have not the honour of knowing Sir George, but have heard his character, description, and story. He is neither older, wiser, nor better principled than you are; to what then are we to impute the difference between the preceptor and the pupil? To nothing more than a circumstance which I am glad to lay hold of, for your instruction. He had conceived a strong, but chaste passion, for a woman of merit, whose name I know not; than which, nothing in nature more elevates the mind, improves the understanding, refines the manners, and purges the affections of man. His mistress is dead, I hear lately, but the influence

of virtue reaches beyond the grave; for a heart once rendered pure, like a transmuted metal, can never degenerate into its original baseness again.
I have often thought that many of the errors of our young men of quality, are owing to a wrong choice of the governors to whom they are intrusted, at the most critical aera of their lives, when their passions are strongest, and their judgment weakest—I mean when they are thought old enough to be sent abroad for improvement, and not deemed wise enough to conduct themselves.
Fathers and guardians, on this occasion, generally fix on some person of learning, which by the ignorant is frequently mistaken for sense; as what is

called a liberal education, is as falsly, and frequently, supposed to be as synonimous with a liberal mind.
The greatest blockheads I have ever known, have been bred in college—Neither absurdity nor meanness prevent a man from becoming master of a language, nor of arriving at a competent knowlege in any particular branch of science.
But these are not the qualifications necessary to form a noble mind; and yet an ignorant pedant, is not only the first person from whom we receive the rudiments of education, but is too often the last, to whose final care we are consigned, to receive that fine polish, to