The sum of my counsel, then, under this head, is, that if you wish really to cultivate your minds, and to prepare them for healthful and useful action, let your studies be solid, diligent, and persevering. Let your reading be such as will fill your minds with the knowledge of facts, principles, and sentiments of the enriching and elevating kind. Let your first and most intimate acquaintance be with those authors whose works will tend to fit you for answering the great purpose for which you were sent into the world. Carefully avoid every species of reading which tends to turn away your minds from sober, practical views of life and duty. And remember that, for every book you read, and for every mental influence which you invite, you have to render a solemn account. There is one more counsel, dear children, with which I will close this letter. It is, that whatever subject you study--whatever book you read, you do it _faithfully_ and _thoroughly_. Leave nothing until you understand it well;--until you have, as far as possible, gone to the bottom of it. You may rely upon it that no solid knowledge is to be gained without patient, unwearied labour. Be not in haste, then, to pass on to another subject or lesson, until you have completely mastered that in which you may be engaged. Be not contented with merely enabling yourselves to recite a lesson with plausible fluency. Be sure that you thoroughly comprehend, not only its obvious meaning, but also its elementary principles. Despise the indolence of those, who, in learning languages, are constantly using the miserable crutches of _translations_, instead of walking with the use of their own limbs; and who, whenever a difficulty occurs in mathematics, or any other subject, instead of delving it out themselves, ignobly ask help from some wiser and better scholar. This is cheating yourselves. That which is gained by your own efforts, and with considerable labour, will be better understood, and more firmly lodged in the mind, than that which is imparted gratuitously by others, without any vigorous mental exercise on your part.