But all the rest of the young gentry were employed in cares of a very different nature--the dressing their hair and adorning their persons. Tommy himself had now completely resumed his natural character, and thrown aside all that he had learned during his residence with Mr Barlow; he had contracted an infinite fondness for all those scenes of dissipation which his new friends daily described to him, and began to be convinced that one of the most important things in life is a fashionable dress. In this _most rational_ sentiment he had been confirmed by almost all the ladies with whom he had conversed since his return home. The distinctions of character, relative to virtue and understanding, which had been with so much pains inculcated upon his mind, seemed here to be entirely unheeded. No one took the trouble of examining the real principles or motives from which any human being acted, while the most minute attention was continually given to what regarded merely the outside. He observed that the omission of every duty towards our fellow-creatures was not only excused, but even to a certain degree admired, provided it was joined with a certain fashionable appearance; while the most perfect probity or integrity was mentioned with coldness or disgust, and frequently with open ridicule if unconnected with a brilliant appearance. As to all the common virtues of life--such as industry, economy, a punctuality in discharging our obligations or keeping our word--these were qualities which were treated as fit for none but the vulgar. Mr Barlow, he found, had been utterly mistaken in all the principles which he had ever inculcated. "The human species," Mr Barlow used to say, "can only be supplied with food and necessaries by a constant assiduity in cultivating the earth and providing for their mutual wants. It is by labour that everything is produced; without labour, these fertile fields, which are now adorned with all the luxuriance of plenty, would be converted into barren heaths, or impenetrable thickets; these meadows, now the support of a thousand herds of cattle, would be covered with stagnated waters, that would not only render them uninhabitable by beasts, but corrupt the air with pestilential vapours; and even these innumerable flocks of sheep that feed along the hills, would disappear immediately on the cessation of that cultivation, which can alone support them, and secure their existence."