But if I may venture to offer an advice, I should say employ the next two years in letting him see a little more of real life and acquire a due sense of its practical objects.

Send him to a private tutor who is not a pedant, but a man of letters or a man of the world, and if in the metropolis so much the better.

In a word, my young friend is unlike other people; and, with qualities that might do anything in life, I fear, unless you can get him to be like other people, that he will do nothing.

Excuse the freedom with which I write, and ascribe it to the singular interest with which your son has inspired me.

I have the honour to be, dear Sir Peter, Yours truly, WILLIAM HORTON.
Upon the strength of this letter Sir Peter did not indeed summon another family council; for he did not consider that his three maiden sisters could offer any practical advice on the matter.