L. CLIFTON

P.S. On recollection, I am convinced it is a false fear which has

prevented me from mentioning another person, very eminently deserving

of esteem and respect; a fear of doing harm where I meant to do good.

We ought to do our duty, and risk the consequences. The absurd pride of

ancestry occasions many of our young gentlemen to treat those whom they

deem their inferiors by birth with haughtiness, and often with

something worse; forgetting that by this means they immediately cut

themselves off as it were from society: for, by contemning those who

are a supposed step below them, they encourage and incur contempt from

the next immediately above them. This is in some measure the practice:

and, were it true that birth is any merit, it would be a practice to

which we ought to pay a still more strict attention. The young

gentleman however whom I mean to recommend, for his great and peculiar

worth, is Mr. Frank Henley, the son of a person who is gardener and

steward to Sir Arthur; or rather what the people among whom you are at

present would call his _homme d'affaires_. But I must leave my friends

to speak for themselves; which they will do more efficaciously than can

be done by any words of mine.

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