I take up, as he must do, with such company as the world is most apt
to throw in our way; and the colouring, your Lordship knows, is modest
enough for the occasion.
But I attend our boy-adventurer no further in his progress into the
world, and return now to ask you, what effect your Lordship thinks
these strange unexpected scenes must naturally have upon him? Certainly
one or the other of these two; either that the scorn of virtue, he
every where observes, will by degrees abate his reverence of it,
and at length obliterate all the better impressions of his education;
or, if these should still keep their hold of his young ingenuous
breast, that he will entertain the most indignant sentiments of
mankind, and suffer himself to be carried by them into a sour and
sullen misanthropy, at least; perhaps into a sceptical and prophane
impiety.
I have seldom known a young man of sense and parts, educated in this
way, escape from one or other of these mischiefs.