It will be difficult for you to learn human-kind's ways and manners otherwise than from that important source of knowledge.

Your position will more or less render practical knowledge extremely difficult for you, till you get old, and still if you do not prepare yourself for your position, you may become the victim of wicked and designing people, particularly at a period when party spirit runs so high.

Our times resemble most those of the Protestant reformation; then people were moved by religious opinions, as they now undoubtedly are by political passions.
Unfortunately history is rarely written by those who really were the chief movers of events, nor free from a party colouring; this is particularly the case in the works about English history.

In that respect France is much richer, because there we have authenticated memoirs of some of the most important men, and of others who really saw what passed and wrote it down at the time.

Political feelings, besides, rarely created _permanent_ parties like those in England, with the exception, perhaps, of the great distinctions of Catholics and Protestants.