My dearest Love,—To make quite sure of my birthday congratulations reaching you on that day, I send them by to-day's messenger, and confide them to the care of your illustrious mother.
My sincere good wishes for many happy returns of that day which gave you, dear little soul, to us, will be accompanied by some few reflections, which the serious aspect of our times calls forth. My dearest Love, you are now fourteen years old, a period when the delightful pastimes of childhood must be mixed with thoughts appertaining already to a matured part of your life. I know that you have been very studious, but now comes the time when the judgment must form itself, when the character requires attention; in short when the young tree takes the shape which it retains afterwards through life.
VALUABLE ADVICE
To attain this object it is indispensable to give some little time to reflection. The life in a great town is little calculated for such purposes; however, with some firmness of purpose it can be done.
Self-examination is the most important part of the business, and a very useful mode of proceeding is, for instance, every evening to recapitulate the events of the day, and the motives which made one act oneself, as well as to try to guess what might have been the motives of others. Amiable dispositions like yours will easily perceive if your own motives were good. Persons in high situations must particularly guard themselves against selfishness and vanity. An individual in a high and important situation will easily see a great many persons eager to please the first, and to flatter and encourage the last. Selfishness, however, makes the individual itself miserable, and is the cause of constant disappointment, besides being the surest means of being disliked by everybody.
Vanity, on the other hand, is generally artfully used by ambitious and interested people to make one a tool for purposes of their own, but too often in opposition with one's own happiness and destruction of it.
To learn to know oneself, to judge oneself with truth and impartiality, must be the great objects of one's exertion; they are only attainable by constant and cool self-examination.
The position of what is generally called great people has of late become extremely difficult. They are more attacked and calumniated, and judged with less indulgence than private individuals. What they have lost in this way, they have not by any means regained in any other. Ever since the revolution of 1790 they are much less secure than they used to be, and the transition from sovereign power to absolute want has been as frequent as sudden.
It becomes, therefore, necessary that the character should be so formed as not to be intoxicated by greatness and success, nor cast down by misfortune. To be able to do so, one must be able to appreciate things according to their real value, and particularly avoid giving to trifles an undue importance.
Nothing is so great and clear a proof of unfitness for greater and nobler actions, than a mind which is seriously occupied with trifles.