Advice To A Young Man Upon First Going To Oxford In Ten Letters

SENSE OF RELIGION.

MY DEAR NEPHEW,

It gives me sincere pleasure to hear that you have actually become a member of the University of Oxford. This satisfaction, perhaps, may in some degree be attributed to the pleasing recollection of my own Oxford life, but certainly it arises principally from anticipation of the substantial benefits which you, I trust, will derive from your connexion with that seat of learning. At the same time, I will own that my satisfaction is not entirely unmixed with something like apprehension. An University education has many and great advantages, but it also is attended with many temptations;--temptations to which too many young men have yielded, sometimes to the great injury of their character, and the utter ruin of all their future prospects.

In fact, you are now entering upon the most important period--the _turning point_--of your whole life. You have become, in a great measure, your own master. For though you will be under a certain degree of discipline and _surveillance_, yet in a multiplicity of cases you will have to act for yourself--to take your own line. You will have to contend against the allurements of pleasure and dissipation, and you have just reached the age when the natural passions and appetites become most impatient of restraint.

Dettagli