71 
The whole foregoing narrative, in familiar letters 
to his parents, discovers the humility and tender- 
ness of a child towards them ; while by the sole in- 
fluence of personal character and conduct he at 
once made his way into the best society, and 
planted himself in a niche in the temple of science, 
when others, with more apparent advantages, were 
consuming their time in “ chinking useless keys, and 
aiming feeble pushes against the inexorable doors.” 
He spent about two years in that accomplished 
community, in a well regulated course of useful dis- 
cipline and studies, and in the agreeable and im- 
proving commerce of gentlemen and scholars ; in a 
society, where emulation without envy, ambition 
without jealousy, contention without animosity, in- 
cited industry and awakened genius; where a liberal 
pursuit of knowledge, and a genuine freedom of 
thought, was raised, encouraged and pushed forward 
by example, by commendation, and by authority. 
Of the warinth and goodness of his heart, his 
early letters bear unequivocal testimony, as well as 
of that peculiar tendency in his nature to form at- 
tachments, which he carried with him through life : 
and wherever these were placed, nothing on his part 
ever changed their force, he thought no sacrifices 
too great, and no expressions too strong, to attest 
his regard. 
In these partialities he was influenced by his love 
of genuine nature, and the appearance of confidence 
and dependence upon him. “My heart,” he says 
in a letter written in 1783, “is formed for social 
enjoyments ; but how often have its warmest affec- 
