Sunning Hill, in Windsor Forest, where I propose to drink those waters for about a month. Lady Hester and I will be happy in your company, if your doctor shall be of opinion that such waters may be of service to you; which, I hope, will be his opinion. Besides health recovered, the muses shall not be quite forgot; we will ride, read, walk, and philosophize, extremely at our ease, and you may return to Cambridge with new ardor, or, at least, with strength repaired, when we leave Sunning Hill. If you come, the sooner the better on all accounts. We propose to go into Buckinghamshire in about a month. I rejoice that your declamation is over, and that you have begun, my dearest nephew, to open your mouth in public. I wish I had heard you perform; the only way I ever shall hear your praises from your own mouth. My gout prevented my so much intended and wished for journey to Cambridge, and now my plan of drinking waters renders it impossible. Come, then, my dear boy, to us; and so Mahomet and the mountain may meet, no matter which moves to the other.

LETTER XIII.

July 13, 1755.

MY DEAR NEPHEW,-I have delayed writing to you in expectation of hearing farther from you upon the subject of your stay at college. No news is the best news, and I will hope now that all your difficulties upon that head are at an end. I represent you to myself deep in study, and drinking large draughts of intellectual nectar; a very delicious state to a mind happy enough, and elevated enough, to thirst after knowledge, and true, honest fame, even as the hart panteth after the water brooks. When I name knowledge, I ever intend learning as the weapon and instrument only of manly, honorable, and virtuous action upon the stage of the world, both in private and public life; as a gentleman, and as a member of the commonwealth, who is to answer for all he does to the laws of his country, to his own breast and conscience, and at the tribunal of honor and good fame. You, my dear boy, will not only be acquitted, but applauded and dignified at all these respectable and awful bars. So, go on and prosper in your glorious and happy career; not forgetting to walk an hour briskly, every morning and evening, to fortify the nerves. I wish to hear, in some little time, of the progress you shall have made in the course of reading chalked out. Adieu.

LETTER XIV.

STOWE, July 24, 1755.

MY DEAR NEPHEW,-I am just leaving this place to go to Wotton; but I will not lose the post, though I have time but for one line. I am extremely happy that you can stay at your college, and pursue the prudent and glorious resolution of employing your present moments with a view to the future. May your noble and generous love of virtue pay you with the sweet rewards of a self-approving heart and an applauding country! and may I enjoy the true satisfaction of seeing your fame and happiness, and of thinking that I may have been fortunate enough to have contributed, in any small degree, to do common justice to kind nature by a suitable education. I am no very good judge of the question concerning the books; I believe they are your own in the same sense that your wearing apparel is. I would retain them, and leave the candid and equitable Mr. to plan, with the honest Mr. -1 schemes of perpetual vexation. As to the persons just mentioned, I trust that you bear about you a mind and heart much superior to such malice; and that you are as little capable of resenting it, with any sensations but those of cool, decent contempt, as you are of fearing the consequences of such low efforts. As to the caution money, I think you have done well. The case of the

chambers, I conceive, you likewise apprehend rightly. Let me know in your next what these two articles require you to pay down, and how far your present cash is exhausted, and I will direct Mr. Campbell to give you credit accordingly. Believe me, my dear nephew, truly happy to be of use to you.

LETTER XV.

BATH, Sept. 25, 1755.

I have not conversed with my dear nephew a long time: I have been much in a post-chaise, living a wandering Scythian life, and he has been more usefully employed than in reading or writing letters; traveling through the Various, instructing, and entertaining road of history. I have a particular pleasure in hearing, now and then, a word from you in your journey, just while you are changing horses, if I may so call it, and getting from one author to another. I suppose you are going through the biographers, from Edward the Fourth downwards, not intending to stop till you reach to the continuator of honest Rapin. . . . I have met with a scheme of chronology by Blair, showing all contemporary historical characters, through all ages: it is of great use to consult frequently, in order to fix periods and throw collateral light upon any particular branch you are reading. Let me know, when I have the pleasure of a letter from you, how far you are advanced in English history. You may probably not have heard authentically of Governor Lyttleton's captivity and release. He is safe and well in England, after being taken and detained in France some days. Sir Richard and he met, unexpectedly enough, at Brussels, and came together to England. I propose to return to London in about a week, where I hope to find Lady Hester as well as I left her. We are both much indebted for your kind and affectionate wishes "In publica commoda peccem, si longo sermone moier (I would sin against the public weal were I to detain with a long discourse)," one bent on so honorable and virtuous a journey as you are.

LETTER XVI.

PAY OFFICE, Dec. 6, 1755.

Of all the various satisfactions of mind I have felt upon some late events, none has affected me with more sensibility and delight than the reading my dear nephew's letter. The matter of it is worthy of a better age than that we live in; worthy of your own noble, untainted mind; and the manner and expression of it is such as, I trust, will one day make you a powerful instrument toward mending the present degeneracy. Examples are unnecessary to happy natures; and it is well for your future glory and happiness that this is the case; for to copy any now existing, might cramp genius and check the native spirit of the piece, rather than contribute to the perfection of it. I learn, from Sir Richard Lyttleton, that we may have the pleasure of meeting soon, as he has already, or intends to offer you a bed at his house. It is on this, as on all occasions, little necessary to preach prudence, or to intimate a wish that your studies at Cambridge might not be broken by a long interruption of them. I know the rightness of your own mind, and leave you to all the generous and animating motives you find there, for pursuing improvements in literature and useful knowledge, as much better counsellors than your ever most affectionate uncle.

LETTER XVII.

HORSE GUARDS, Jan. 13, 1756. MY DEAR NEPHEW,-Let me thank you a thousand times for your remem bering me, and giving me the pleasure of hearing that you was well, and had laid by the ideas of London and its dissipations, to resume the sober train of

thoughts that gowns, square caps, quadrangles, and matin-bells naturally draw after them. I hope the air of Cambridge has brought no disorder upon you, and that you will compound with the muses so as to dedicate some hours, not less than two, of the day to exercise. The earlier you rise, the better your nerves will bear study. When you next do me the pleasure to write to me, I beg a copy of your elegy on your mother's picture: it is such admirable poetry, that I beg you to plunge deep into prose and severer studies, and not indulge your genius with verse for the present. Substitute Tully and Demosthenes in the place of Homer and Virgil; and arm yourself with all the variety of manner, copiousness, and beauty of diction, nobleness and magnificence of ideas, of the Roman consul; and render the powers of eloquence complete by the irresistible torrent of vehement argumentation, the close and forcible reasoning, and the depth and fortitude of mind of the Grecian statesman. This I mean at leisure intervals, and to relieve the course of those studies which you intend to make your principal object. The book relating to the empire of Germany, which I could not recollect, is Vitriarius's Institutiones Juris Publici, an admirable book in its kind, and esteemed of the best authority in matters much controverted. We are all well. Your affectionate uncle,

WILLIAM PITT.

In the Correspondence of the Earl of Chatham,' edited by the executors of his son, John, Earl of Chatham, and published from the original manuscripts in their possession, '1838,' there are three more letters addressed to Mr. Thomas Pitt, during his studies at Cambridge, but they are without significance, beyond inquiries after the health of his nephew, who was admitted to the degree of A.M. in 1759. In February, 1800, he visited Portugal, attached to the British Legation to the Court of Lisbon, and, accompanied by the Earl of Strathmore, made a tour through Spain, and into Italy. On his return, he soon entered Parliament, and, until his death, was connected with the public service.

JOHN LOCKE.-ON STUDY.

ITS LIMITATIONS, OBJECTS, AND METHODS.

LIMITATIONS OF THE FIELD.

THE end of study is knowledge, and the end of knowledge is practice or communication-for delight is so commonly joined with all improvements in knowledge, that it need not be proposed as an end. The extent of knowledge, or things knowable, is so vast, our duration here so short, the entrance by which the knowledge of things gets into our understanding so narrow, with the necessary allowances for childhood and old age in which so little can be acquired beyond the range of the senses, and the refreshments of our bodies and unavoidable avocations, that it much behooves us to improve, the best we can, our time and talent on things most worthy of being known, and take the most direct road we can to our objects. To this purpose, it may not, perhaps, be amiss to decline some things that are likely to bewilder us, or at least lie out of our way

1. As all that maze of words and phrases which have been invented and employed only to instruct and amuse people in the art of disputing, and will be found, perhaps, when looked into, to have little or no meaning; and with this kind of stuff the logics, physics, ethics, metaphysics, and divinity of the schools are thought by some to be too much filled. This I am sure, that where we leave distinctions without finding a difference in things; where we make variety of phrases, or think we furnish ourselves with arguments without a progress in the real knowledge of things, we only fill our heads with empty sounds, which however thought to belong to learning and knowledge, will no more improve our understandings and strengthen our reason, than the noise of a jack will fill our bellies or strengthen our bodies; and the art to fence with those which are called subtleties, is of no more use than it would be to be dexterous in tying and untying knots in cobwebs.

2. An aim and desire to know what hath been other men's opinions. Truth needs no recommendation, and error is not mended by it; and in our inquiry after knowledge, it as little concerns us what other men have thought, as it does one who is to go from Oxford to London, to know what scholars walk quietly on foot, inquiring the way and surveying the country as they went, who rode post after their guide without minding the way he went, who were carried along muffled up in a coach with their company, or where one doctor lost or went out of his way, or where another stuck in the mire. I do not say this to

Abridged. This essay is not contained in Locke's collected works, but was first published in Lord King's Life of the author.

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undervalue the light we receive from others, or to think there are not those who assist us mightily in our endeavors after knowledge; perhaps without books we should be as ignorant as the Indians, whose minds are as ill clad as their bodies; but I think it is an idle and useless thing to make it one's business to study what have been other men's sentiments in things where reason is only to be judge, on purpose to be furnished with them, and to be able to cite them on all occasions. However it be esteemed a great part of learning, yet to a man that considers how little time he has, and how much work to do, how many things he is to learn, how many doubts to clear in religion, how many rules to establish to himself in morality, how much pains to be taken with himself to master his unruly desires and passions, how to provide himself against a thousand cases and accidents that will happen, and an infinite deal more, both in his general and particular calling; I say, to a man that considers this well, it will not seem much his business to acquaint himself designedly with the various conceits of men that are to be found in books even upon subjects of moment.

3. Purity of language, a polished style, or exact criticism in foreign languages-thus I think Greek and Latin may be called, as well as French and Italian, and to spend much time in these may perhaps serve to set one off in the world, and give one the reputation of a scholar. But if that be all, methinks it is laboring for an outside; it is at best but a handsome dress of truth or falsehood that one busies one's self about, and makes most of those who lay out their time this way rather as fashionable gentlemen, than as wise or useful men.

There are so many advantages of speaking one's own language well, and being a master in it, that let a man's calling be what it will, it can not but be worth our taking some pains in it, but men's style is by no means to have the first place in our studies: but he that makes good language subservient to a good life, and an instrument of virtue, is doubly enabled to do good to others. 4. Antiquity and history as far as they are designed only to furnish us with story and talk. For the stories of Alexander and Cæsar, no farther than they instruct us in the art of living well, and furnish us with observations of wisdom and prudence, are not one jot to be preferred to the history of Robin Hood, or the Seven Wise Masters. I do not deny but history is very useful, and very instructive of human life; but if it be studied only for the reputation of being an historian, it is a very empty thing; and he that can tell all the particulars of Herodotus and Plutarch, Curtius and Livy, without making any other use of them, may be an ignorant man with a good memory, and with all his pains hath only filled his head with Christmas tales. And which is worse, the greatest part of history being made up of wars and conquests, and their style, especially the Romans, speaking of valor as the chief, if not the only virtue, we are in danger to be misled by the general current and business of history, and looking on Alexander and Cæsar, and such like heroes, as the highest instances of human greatness, because they each of them caused the death of several hundred thousand men, and the ruin of a much greater number, overrun a great part of the earth, and killed the inhabitants to possess themselves of their countries-we are apt to make butchery, and rapine the chief marks and very essence of Iruman greatness.

5. Nice questions and remote useless speculations, as where the earthly