If you have read, gentle reader, the earlier series of _Letters to my
Grandson on the World about Him_, you are to understand that in the
interval between those letters and these, Antony has grown to be a boy
in the sixth form of his public school.
It has not been any longer necessary therefore to study an extreme
simplicity of diction in these letters.
My desire has been to lead him into the most glorious company in the
world, in the hope that, having early made friends with the noblest of
human aristocracy, he will never afterwards admit to his affection and
intimacy anything mean or vulgar.
Many young people who, like Antony, are not at all averse from the
study of English writers, stand aghast at the vastness of the what
seems so gigantic an enterprise.
In these letters I have acted as pilot for a first voyage through what is
to a boy an uncharted sea, after which I hope and believe he will have
learned happily to steer for himself among the islands of the blest.