"And, some time after, he startled me by a prayer that I would permit him, with his father's consent, to accompany you to Australia. The only answer I have given him as yet, has been in the form of a question: 'Ask yourself if I ought? I cannot wish Pisistratus to be other than he is; and unless you agree with him in all his principles and objects, ought I to incur the risk that you should give him your knowledge of the world, and inoculate him with your ambition?' He was struck, and had the candour to attempt no reply. "Now, Pisistratus, the doubt I expressed to him is the doubt I feel. For, indeed, it is only by home-truths, not refining arguments, that I can deal with this unscholastic Scythian, who, fresh from the Steppes, comes to puzzle me in the Portico. "On the one hand, what is to become of him in the Old World? At his age, and with his energies, it would be impossible to cage him with us in the Cumberland ruins; weariness and discontent would undo all we could do. He has no resource in books--and I fear never will have! But to send him forth into one of the overcrowded professions--to place him amidst all those 'disparities of social life,' on the rough stones of which he is perpetually grinding his heart--turn him adrift amongst all the temptations to which he is most prone--this is a trial which, I fear, will be too sharp for a conversion so incomplete. In the New World, no doubt, his energies would find a safer field; and even the adventurous and desultory habits of his childhood might there be put to healthful account. Those complaints of the disparities of the civilised world, find, I suspect, an easier if a bluffer reply from the political economist than the Stoic philosopher. 'You don't like them, you find it hard to submit to them,' says the political economist; 'but they are the laws of a civilised state, and you can't alter them. Wiser men than you have tried to alter them, and never succeeded, though they turned the earth topsy-turvy! Very well; but the world is wide--go into a state that is not so civilised. The disparities of the Old World vanish amidst the New! Emigration is the reply of Nature to the rebellious cry against Art.' Thus would say the political economist: and, alas, even in your case, my son, I found no reply to the reasonings! I acknowledge, then, that Australia might open the best safety-valve to your cousin's discontent and desires; but I acknowledge also a counter-truth, which is this--'It is not permitted to an honest man to corrupt himself for the sake of others.' That is almost the only maxim of Jean Jacques to which I can cheerfully subscribe! Do you feel quite strong enough to resist all the influences which a companionship of this kind may subject you to--strong enough to