This little Work, which was announced for publication in June, 1823, under the title of The Counsels of Wisdom, has been delayed so long in consequence of the accidental appearance in the meantime of another work nearly similar in subject and title. PREFACE. THE Instructive Letters, with which we here present our Readers, need no encomium of ours replete with the lessons of Piety, Virtue, and Wisdom, their claims upon our attention are obvious. In them will be found all that is necessary for guiding us with safety and honour through the tempests of Human Life, and much of what is conducive to our happiness hereafter. They form a brief Manual of Conduct, upon which we may rely with full security as the collected fruit of wisdom the most sublime, experience the most enlarged, and goodness the most pure, com-. patible with the imperfect nature of mortality. The names, alone, of Sidney, Burleigh, Milton, Locke, Newton, and Chatham, bear us out in this assertion; they are immediate passports In the hope that the inestimable value of these relics, bequeathed to posterity by men so justly celebrated, may be diligently examined, rightly appreciated, and finally turned to profit by the reader, we have endeavoured so to dispose and illustrate our materials as will be most agreeable to the tastes and inclinations of our Juvenile Friends, to whose patronage we chiefly look for the success of our little Volume. However desirable, it is by no means easy to convey instruction into the youthful breast: perhaps, indeed, it is unjust to expect at that such a love of wisdom as would lead to age the contemplation of it with an interest only |