But these different habits and characters were still of farther use to our hero, for by their means he had a better opportunity of seeing the world, and knowing mankind, than most of our youths who make the grand tour; for, as he had none of those petty amusements and raree-shows, which so much divert our young gentlemen abroad, to engage his attention, it was wholly applied to the study of mankind, their various passions and inclinations; and he made the greater improvement in his study, as in many of his characters they acted before him without reserve or disguise. He saw in little and plain houses hospitality, charity and compassion, the children of frugality; and found under gilded and spacious roofs, littleness, uncharitableness and inhumanity, the offspring of luxury and riot; he saw servants waste their master’s substance, and that there were no greater nor more crafty thieves than domestic ones; and met with masters who roared out for liberty abroad, acting the arbitrary tyrants in their own houses:—he saw ignorance and passion exercise the rod of justice; oppression, the handmaid of power; self-interest outweighing friendship and honesty in the opposite scale; pride and envy spurning and trampling on what was more worthy than themselves;—he saw the pure white robes of truth sullied with the black hue of hypocrisy and dissimulation; he sometimes, too, met much riches unattended by pomp and pride, but diffusing themselves in numberless unexhausted streams, conducted by the hands of two lovely servants, Goodness and Beneficence;—and he saw honesty, integrity and goodness of mind, inhabitants of the humble cot of poverty. All these observations afforded him no little pleasure, but he felt a much greater in the indulgence of the emotions of filial piety, paying his parents frequent visits, unknown to them, in different disguises; at which time, the tenderness he saw them express in their inquiries after him (it being their constant custom so to do of all travellers) always melted him into real tears. It has been remarked, that curiosity, or the desire of knowledge, is that which most distinguishes man from the brute, and the greater the mind is, the more insatiable is that passion: we may, without flattery, say no man had a more boundless one than our hero; for, not satisfied with the observations he had made in England and Wales, (which we are well assured were many more than are usually made by gentlemen before they travel into foreign parts,) he now resolved to see other countries and manners. He was the more inclined to this, as he imagined it would enable him to be of greater service to the community of which he was a member, by rendering him capable of executing some of his stratagems with much greater success.