The rights of primogeniture, and the mild and prudent cast of your brother’s character, left me no cares either for his worldly interest or moral welfare: born to titled affluence, his destination in life was ascertained previous to his entrance on its chequered scene; and equally free from passions to mislead, or talents to stimulate, he promised to his father that series of temperate satisfaction which, unillumined by those coruscations, _your_ superior and promising genius flashed on the parental heart, could not prepare for its sanguine feelings that mortal disappointment with which _you_ have destroyed all its hopes. On the recent death of my father I found myself possessed of a very large but incumbered property: it was requisite I should make the same establishment for my eldest son, that my father had made for me; while I was conscious that my youngest was in some degree to stand indebted to his own exertions, for independence as well as elevation in life. You may recollect that during your first college vacation, we conversed on the subject of that liberal profession I had chosen for you, and you agreed with me, that it was congenial to your powers, and not inimical to your taste; while the part I was anxious you should take in the legislation of your country, seemed at once to rouse and gratify your ambition; but the pure flame of laudable emulation was soon extinguished in the destructive atmosphere of pleasure, and while I beheld you, in the visionary hopes of my parental ambition, invested with the crimson robe of legal dignity, or shining brightly conspicuous in the splendid galaxy of senatorial luminaries, _you_ were idly presiding as the high priest of libertinism at the nocturnal orgies of vitiated dissipation, or indolently lingering out your life in elegant but unprofitable pursuits. It were as vain as impossible to trace you through every degree of error on the scale of folly and imprudence, and such a repetition would be more heart wounding to me than painful to you, were it even made under the most extenuating bias of parental fondness. I have only to add, that though already greatly distressed by the liquidation of your debts, at a time when I am singularly circumstanced with respect to pecuniary resources, I will make a struggle to free you from the chains of this your present _iron_-hearted creditor, through the retrenchment of my _own_ expenses, and my temporary retreat to the solitute of my Irish estate must be the result; provided that by this sacrifice I purchace your acquiescence to my wishes respecting the destiny of your future life, and an unreserved abjuration of the follies which have governed your past. Yours, &c. &c. M------. TO THE EARL OF M-------- My Lord,