What is a lodging-house at Brighton but
an uncertain maintenance? The mariner on the sea before those cliffs is
no more sure of wind and wave, or of fish to his laborious net, than the
Brighton house-owner (bred in affluence she may have been, and used to
unremitting plenty) to the support of the casual travellers who visit the
city. On one day they come in shoals, it is true, but where are they on
the next? For many months my poor sister's first floor was a desert,
until occupied by your noble little boy, my nephew and pupil. Clive is
everything that a father's, an uncle's (who loves him as a father), a
pastor's, a teacher's affections could desire. He is not one of those
premature geniuses whose much-vaunted infantine talents disappear along
with adolescence; he is not, I frankly own, more advanced in his
classical and mathematical studies than some children even younger than
himself; but he has acquired the rudiments of health; he has laid in a
store of honesty and good-humour, which are not less likely to advance
him in life than mere science and language, than the as in praesenti, or
the pons asinorum.
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