“Yes! my dear sir, was my mind sufficiently strong or capacious to understand, or even to comprehend the study of ancient and modern philosophy, I am certain I should derive very great advantage from that study; but you certainly forgot when you recommended it, that you were addressing the weaker sex, to whom stoicism would be both unamiable and unnatural, and who would be very liable in avoiding Scylla, to strike upon Charybdis, or to speak without metaphor, to rush into scepticism. Have you perceived anything like fatalism in my letters? I am unconscious of it, though I fear there may sometimes be a little inclination toward it. The woman you selected for your wife was so highly gifted in mind, with powers so vast, and such quick and clear perception, altogether so superior to the general run of females, you have perhaps formed a too enlarged opinion of the capacities of our sex, and having never witnessed their frailties, are not aware of the dangers to which they are exposed, by acquirements above their strength. “The systems of the ancients have been quite out of my reach, excepting the Dialogues of Plato, which Mr. A. recommended to me last year, and which I read attentively. I cannot say that I am entirely unacquainted with their different theories, but that acquaintance has been too superficial to make them well understood, and I have been too much inclined to view them, as difficult of practice, and not tending much to the real benefit of mankind. With the modern philosophers I have become more intimate, if I may make use of such a word, speaking of works which I have read, but which I could not understand or digest. Locke has puzzled me, Berkley amused me, Reid astonished me, Hume disgusted me, and Tucker either diverted me or set me to sleep. This is a very limited sort of reading, and you will laugh at my catalogue of names which have at best, I believe, but little title to the rank of philosophers, or at least must come in at the fag end. I have dipped into others and thrown them aside, but I have never seen anything that would satisfy my mind, or that would compare with the chaste and exquisitely simple doctrines of Christianity.