You are willing, perhaps, that he _should_ know a few facts of ancient times, and can, though with hesitation, trust him with some such slight stories as Goldsmith's Histories of Greece and Rome. But if he should then by some means find his way into such a work as that of Rollin, (of moral and instructive tendency, however defective otherwise,) or betray that he covets an acquaintance with those of Gillies, or even Thirlwall,--it is all over with him for being a useful member of society in his humble situation. You would consent (may we suppose?) to his reading a slender abridgment of voyages and travels; but what _is_ to become of him if nothing less will content him than the whole-length story of Captain Cook? He will direct, it is to be hoped, some of his best attention to the supreme subject of religion. And you would quite approve of his perusing some useful tracts, some manuals of piety, some commentary on a catechism, some volume of serious, plain discourses; but he is absolutely undone if his ambition should rise at length to Barrow, or Howe, or Jeremy Taylor. [Footnote: It should be unnecessary to observe, that the object in citing _any_ names in this paragraph was, to give a somewhat definite cast to the description of the supposed progress of the plebeian self-instructor. The principal of them are mentioned simply as being of such note in their departments, that he would be likely to hear of them among the first of the authors to be sought, if he were aspiring to something beyond his previously humble and abridged reading. The reader may substitute for these names any others, of the superior order, that he may think more proper to stand in their place. It would therefore be animadversion or ridicule misspent, to make the charge of extravagance on this imagined course of a plain man's reading, with a specific reference to the authors here named, as if it had been meant that precisely these, by a peculiar selection, were to be the authors he may be supposed to peruse, and in perusing, to waste his time and destroy his sense of duty.] He is by all means, you say, to be kept out of all such pernicious company, in which it is impossible he can learn any lesson but one,--an aversion to good morals, just laws, virtuous kings, a polished and benevolent gentry, and learned and pious teachers. Well; _let_ him be kept as far as possible from the mischief of all such books and knowledge; let him hardly know that there _was_ an ancient world, or that there _are_ on the globe such regions and wonders as travellers have described; or that a reason and eloquence above the pitch of some plain homily ever illustrated and enforced religion. _Let_ him keep clear of all such evil communications; and then, (since we were expressly making it a condition, that he can fairly spare the time for such reading from his common employment,) and then,--he will have just so much the more time for needless sleep, for