I AM indeed, my dear George, the most happy of human beings; happy in the paternal regard of the best of parents, the sincere esteem of my worthy relations, lord and lady Belmont; and the friendship, the tender friendship of their/ lovely daughter, the amiable lady Julia. An encrease of fortune, which you are kind enough to wish me, might perhaps add something to my felicity, but is far from being necessary to constitute it, nor did it ever excite in my bosom an anxious wish. My father, though he educated me to become the most splendid situation, yet instructed me to be satisfied with my own moderate one; he taught me that independence was all a generous mind required; and that virtue, adorned by that liberal education his unsparing bounty lavished on me, would command through life that heart-felt esteem from the worthy of every rank, which the most exorbitant wealth alone could never procure its possessors. Other parents hoard up riches for their children; mine with a more noble, more enlightened solicitude, expended his in storing my mind with generous sentiments and useful knowledge, to which/ his unbounded goodness added every outward accomplishment that could give grace to virtue, and set her charms in the fairest light.

Shall I then murmur because I was not born to affluence? No, believe me, I would not be the son of any other than this most excellent of men, to inherit all the stores which avarice and ambition sigh for. I am prouder of a father to whose discerning wisdom, and generous expanded heart, I am so obliged, than I should be of one whom I was to succeed in all the titles and possessions in the power of fortune to bestow. From him I receive, and learn properly to value, the most real of all treasures, independence and content.