If that be

some degree nervous. so, advise with him whether a little change of air and of the scene, together with some weeks course of steel waters, might not be highly proper for you. I am to go the day after to-morrow to Sunning Hill, in Windsor Forest, where I propose to drink those waters for about a month. Lady Hester and I shall 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 Cam

bridge with new ardour, 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, ingenti Patriæ perculsus Amore. 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 meet, no matter which moves to the other. Adieu.

Your ever affectionate.

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, honourable, 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 honour and good fame. You, my dear boy, will not only be acquitted, but applauded and dignified at all these respectable and awful bars. So, macte tuâ virtute!