cii 
LIFE OF WILSON. 
"Devote your whole time, except what is proper for needful exercise, to 
rendering yourself completely master of your business. For this purpose rise 
by the peep of dawn; take your regular walk; and then commence your 
stated studies. Be under no anxiety to hear what people think of you, or of 
your tutorship; but study the improvement, and watch over the good conduct, 
of their children consigned to your care, as if they were your own. Mingle 
respect and afTability with your orders and arrangements. Never show your- 
self feverish or irritated ; but preserve a firm and dignified, a just and ener- 
getic deportment, in every emergency. To be completely master of one's 
business, and ever anxious to discharge it with fidelity and honor, is to be 
great, beloved, respectable, and happy. 
" 1 could have wished that you had been accommodated with a room and 
boarding in a more private and retired situation, where your time and reflec- 
tions would have been more your own ; and perhaps these may be obtained 
hereafter. Try to discover your own defects, and labor with all your energy 
to supply them. Respect j'ourself, and fear nothing but cice and idkucus. If 
one had no other reward for doing one's duty, but the grateful sensations arising 
therefrom on the retrospection, the recompense would be abundant, as these 
alone arc able to bear us up amidst every reverse. 
" At present I cannot enlarge further, my own mind being harassed with 
diflieulties relative to my publication. I have now no further dependence on 
Murray; and I mean to make it consistent both with the fame, and the inter- 
est, of Lawson to do his best for me. I hope you will continue to let me hear 
from you, from time to time. I anticipate much pleasure from the improve- 
ments which I have no doubt you will now make in the several necessary 
departments of your business. Wishing you every success in your endeavors 
to excel, I remain, with sincere regard, &c." 
In the early part of the year 1812, Wilson published his fifth volume; and, 
as the prefiice is interesting, we here insert an extract from it, for the gratifi- 
cation of the reader. 
" The fifth volume of this extensive work Is submitted to the public with all 
due deference and respect; and the author having now, as he conjectures, 
reached the middle stage of his journey, or in traveller's phrase, the ' half-way 
house,' may be permitted to indulge himself with a slight retrospect of the 
ground he has already traversed, and a glimpse of that which still lies before^ 
him. 
" The whole of our Land Birds (those of the sixth volume included, which 
are nearly ready for the press) have now been figured and described, probably 
a very few excepted, which, it is hoped, will also shortly be obtained. These 
have been gleaned up from an extensive territory of woods and fields, unfre- 
quented forests, solitary ranges of mountains, swamps and morasses, by succes- 
sive jourue3rs and excursions of more than ten thousand miles. With all the 
industry which a single individual could possibly exert, several species have 
doubtless escaped him. These, future expeditions may enable him to procure; 
or the kindness of his distant literary friends obligingly supply him with. 
