48.  Hoping that I have said enough to induce you to set resolutely about the study of grammar, I might here leave the subject of learning; arithmetic and grammar, both well learned, being as much as I could wish in a mere youth.  But these need not occupy the whole of your spare time; and, there are other branches of learning which ought immediately to follow.  If your own calling or profession require book-study, books treating of that are to be preferred to all others; for, the first thing, the first object in life, is to secure the honest means of obtaining sustenance, raiment, and a state of being suitable to your rank, be that rank what it may:  excellence in your own calling is, therefore, the first thing to be aimed at.  After this may come general knowledge, and of this, the first is a thorough knowledge of your own country; for, how ridiculous is it to see an English youth engaged in reading about the customs of the Chinese or of the Hindoos, while he is content to be totally ignorant of those of Kent or of Cornwall!  Well employed he must be in ascertaining how Greece was divided and how the Romans parcelled out their territory, while he knows not, and apparently does not want to know, how England came to be divided into counties, hundreds, parishes and tithings.

49.  GEOGRAPHY naturally follows Grammar; and you should begin with that of this kingdom, which you ought to understand well, perfectly well, before you venture to look abroad.  A rather slight knowledge of the divisions and customs of other countries is, generally speaking, sufficient; but, not to know these full well, as far as relates to our own country, is, in one who pretends to be a gentleman or a scholar, somewhat disgraceful.  Yet how many men are there, and those called gentlemen too, who seem to think that counties and parishes, and churches and parsons, and tithes and glebes, and manors and courts-leet, and paupers and poor-houses, all grew up in England, or dropped down upon it, immediately after Noah’s flood!  Surely, it is necessary for every man, having any pretensions to scholarship, to know how these things came; and, the sooner this knowledge is acquired the better; for, until it be acquired, you read the history of your country in vain.  Indeed, to communicate this knowledge is one main part of the business of history; but it is a part which no historian, commonly so called, has, that I know of, ever yet performed, except, in part, myself, in the History of the PROTESTANT REFORMATION.  I had read HUME’S History of England, and the Continuation by SMOLLETT; but, in 1802, when I wanted to write on the subject of the non-residence of the clergy, I found, to my great mortification, that I knew nothing of the foundation of the office and the claims of the parsons, and that I could not even guess at the origin of parishes.  This gave a new turn to my inquiries; and I soon found the romancers, called historians, had given me no information that I could rely on, and, besides, had done, apparently, all they could to keep me in the dark.