she became a confiderable proficient in Algebra, and with a view to qualify herself for the office of preceptor to her fifter's fon, who was destined to a maritime profeffion, made herself perfect in Trigonometry, and the Theory of Navigation. Mrs. Jones, after

From the SAME to the SAME.

DEAR SIR,

London, July 11th, 1713. It is impossible to represent to you, with what pleasure I received your inestimable present of the Principia, and am much concerned to find myself so deeply charged with obligations to you, and such I fear as all my future endeavours will never be able to requite. This edition is indeed exceedingly beautiful, and interspersed with great variety of admirable discoveries so very natural to its great author; but it is more so from the additional advantage of your excellent preface, which I wish much to get published in some of the foreign journals; and since a better account of this book cannot be given, I suppose it will not be difficult to get it done. Now, this great task being done, I hope you will think of publishing your papers, and not let such valuable pieces lie by. As to what you mentioned in your last, concerning my old manuscripts, though for my part I know of nothing worth your notice publicly in them, but, if you do find any, the end of my sending them is the better answered; and you know that you may do as you please.

I am, Sir,

Your most obedient servant,

WILLIAM JONES.

the death of her husband, was urgently and repeatedly folicited, by the Countess of Macclesfield, to remain at Sherborne Castle; but having formed a plan for the education of her fon, with an unalterable determination to pursue it, and being apprehensive that her refidence at Sherborne might interfere with the execution of it, the declined accepting the friendly invitation of the Countefs, who never ceased to retain the most affectionate regard for her.

In the plan adopted by Mrs. Jones for the instruction of her fon, fhe propofed to reject the severity of discipline, and to lead his mind insensibly to knowledge and exertion, by exciting his curiofity, and directing it to ufeful objects. To his inceffant importunities for information on cafual topics of conversation, which the watchfully ftimulated, The conftantly replied, read, and you will know; a maxim, to the observance of which he always acknowledged himself indebted for his future attainments. By this method, his defire to learn became as eager as her

with to teach; and fuch was her talent of inftruction, and his facility of retaining it, that in his fourth year he was able to read, diftinctly and rapidly, any English book. She particularly attended at the same time to the cultivation of his memory, by making him learn and repeat some of the popular speeches in Shakespeare, and the best of Gay's Fables,

If, from the fubfequent eminence of Sir William Jones, any general conclufion fhould be eagerly drawn in favour of early tuition, we must not forget to advert to the uncommon talents both of the pupil and the teacher.

In common cafes, premature instruction has often been found to retard, rather than accelerate, the progrefs of the intellectual faculties; and the fuccefs of it so much depends upon the judgment of the tutor, and the capacity of the fcholar, upon the skill of the one, as well as upon the disposition and powers of the other, that it is impoffible to prescribe a general rule, when instruction ought to begin, or a general mode, by which

it should be conveyed; the determination in both cafes must be left to the difcretion of

parents, who ought to be the most competent to decide.

In this year of his life, Jones providentially escaped from two accidents, one of which had nearly proved fatal to his fight, the other to his life. Being left alone in a room, in attempting to scrape some foot from the chimney, he fell into the fire, and his clothes were inftantly in flames: his cries brought the fervants to his affiftance, and he was preserved with fome difficulty; but his face, neck, and arms, were much burnt. A short time afterwards, when his attendants were putting on his clothes, which were imprudently fastened with hooks, he struggled, either in play, or in fome childish pet, and a hook was fixed in his right eye. By due care, under the directions of Dr. Mead, whose friendship with his family continued unabated after his father's death, the wound was healed; but the eye was fo much weak

ened, that the fight of it ever remained imperfect.

His propenfity to reading, which had begun to display itself, was for a time checked by these accidents; but the habit was acquired, and after his recovery he indulged it without reftraint, by perufing eagerly any books that came in his way, and with an attention proportioned to his ability to comprehend them. In his fifth year, as he was one morning turning over the leaves of a Bible in his mother's closet, his attention was forcibly arrested by the sublime description of the angel in the tenth chapter of the Apocalypfe, and the impreffion which his imagination received from it was never effaced. At a period of mature judgment, he confidered the paffage as equal in fublimity to any in the inspired writers, and far fuperior to any that could be produced from mere human compofitions; and he was fond of retracing and mentioning the rapture which he felt, when he first read it. In his