“Upon these subjects, you, my dear father, have written to me with more earnestness and fear than I should have looked for. You tell me that I see not the inevitable consequences which must follow from the acting out of those opinions and sentiments with which I am so captivated. I confess that I am an ardent friend to civil and religious liberty. I desire to see the laws administered without fear or favour; to see taxation imposed by the Commons alone, and to see purity and charity preaching from our pulpits and ministering at our altars. You must not blame me: these were the desires that you implanted, when you taught me the immutable and eternal principles of justice, and when, both by lip and in your life, you showed me how sacred was the character, and how hallowed were the duties, of an ambassador for Christ. I look for reformation in the state, and purification of the church. You, perhaps, despair of either; and therefore you dread an ill result to the patriotic and pure efforts which so many great and good men are now making. Some of the best and wisest of my college friends think with them. Of that number are my late tutor and my late chamber-fellow, with both of whom you expressed yourself so much delighted, when, during my last year of residence, you visited Cambridge. I confess, frankly, that I hold their sentiments, and entertain hopes of ultimate good to my country as sanguine as theirs. The cause of liberty must triumph. “Your last letter gave but little hope of poor Fanny at the mill: what a fair, cheerful, good girl she was. Martin will be very sorry when he hears about her: if you remember, he was always for dancing with Fanny on May-day. “I am glad to hear that Bessy Blount is going to be married. She will make Tom Hargood’s farm as happy a home as any in England. However, I will not talk about weddings,--the very word makes me melancholy. I am just now preparing a short masque, which we are to perform next week, in honour of Sir Oliver’s birth-day. I suppose Martin, as well as myself, has very different notions of female beauty now to any we gathered at Cheddar; though, I doubt, if we shall either of us become the happier for our knowledge. Rosy cheeks and laughing eyes are joyous and pleasant to look upon, but they seldom beget cureless heart-aches, or plant the long-lived sorrow:--all this is very idle. The love of country is the next best love to that of God, and, after that, the most rewarding.