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enough advanced, to enable us to account for it. Soon after thedeath of my father, I was sent to the University , and admitted aSizar of Trinity College in Cambridge , on the 3d of November,1754. I did not know a single person in the University , exceptmy tutor, Mr. Backhouse, who had been my father’s scholar, andMr. Preston, who had been my own schoolfellow. I commencedmy academic studies with great eagerness, from knowing thatmy future fortune was to be wholly of my own fabricating,being certain that the slender portion which my father had leftto me (300/.) would be barely sufficient to carry me through myeducation. I had no expectations from relations; indeed I hadnot a relation so near as a first cousin in the world, except mymother, and a brother and sister who were many years older thanme. My mother’s maiden name was Newton; she was a verycharitable and good woman, and I am indebted to<her (I mentionit with filial piety) for imbuing my young mind with principlesof religion, which have never forsaken me. Erasmus , in his littletreatise entitled Antibarbarorum, says that the safety of statesdepends upon three things—Upon a proper or improper edu-cation of the prince, upon public preachers, and upon school-masters ; and he might with equal reason have added, uponmothers; for the care of the mother precedes that of the school-master, and may stamp upon the rasa tabula of the infant mind,characters of virtue and religion which no time can efface.

I had not been six months in college before a circumstancehappened to me, trivial in itself and not fit to be noticed, exceptthat it had some influence on my future life, inasmuch as it gaveme a turn to metaphysical disquisition. It was then the custom