that a church very lately erected may, by correct judgment, be made to present the appearance of having been built five hundred years ago. But I must not go on in this way, or you will think that you have got hold of an Oxford guide. Most of the villages and village churches in the neighbourhood, have some character of their own worth examining. So much for amusements connected with exercise, which has led me into something like a repetition of some of the sentiments in a former letter. A few words on sedentary amusements. If you read _in earnest_, and are bent upon making the most of your time, you will have little of it left for amusements of a sedentary nature. The less you have to do with cards the better. Young men can have no occasion for the assistance of cards in order to pass their time; and there seems to be something almost incongruous in the idea of _their_ sitting down to a rubber. Nor do they need the excitement: if they wish for it, that very wish is a reason why they ought not to have it. If they play for money--or, at all events, if they play for such sums as make the winning or losing an object of any degree of consequence--they become gamblers; and of the many bad passions which gambling sometimes calls into activity, and of the destructive consequences which it entails, no one is ignorant. If you once get into the habit of playing, you will, perhaps, not know when to stop. Cards are very seductive, and you may find yourself become a gambler almost before you are aware of it. Perhaps the best plan is _not to know_ how to play, which furnishes an answer always ready. Chess is a game of elegance and interest, and the being a good chess-player, carries with it a certain impression of general ability and of intellectual activity and resource. Perhaps I may allow that playing at chess adds a certain degree of interest to the perusal of the history of a campaign, whether ancient or modern, with its various moves, its checks and counter-checks, its retreats and _castlings_. But chess is a fascinating game, and will be apt to make larger demands upon your time than you can afford. If you indulge in it at all, you must be peremptory with yourself in resisting its tendency to incroach either upon your time or your _temper_. Sometimes, too, it requires so much exertion of thought,--is such a strain upon the mind,--that it hardly can answer the purposes of relaxation. If you play, by all means read Franklin's Essay on the Morals of Chess. For clearness of head, for truth-telling simplicity and honesty of purpose, and for perspicuity and liveliness of style, Franklin has, perhaps, no superior. Always recollect that improvement, moral and intellectual, is the great object for which you were sent to Oxford. With that object nothing must be suffered to interfere. I remain, &c. &c. LETTER VIII. EXPENSES, AND RUNNING IN DEBT. MY DEAR NEPHEW,