It is more than probable, my love, that you are acquainted with what is
called Grecian and Roman history, chiefly from perusing, in very
early youth, the little sheepskin-bound volumes of the ingenious Dr.
Goldsmith, and have been indebted for your knowledge of the English
annals to a subsequent study of the more voluminous works of Hume and
Smollett. The first and the last-named authors, dear Miss Smith, have
written each an admirable history,--that of the Reverend Dr. Primrose,
Vicar of Wakefield, and that of Mr. Robert Bramble, of Bramble Hall--in
both of which works you will find true and instructive pictures of human
life, and which you may always think over with advantage. But let me
caution you against putting any considerable trust in the other works of
these authors, which were placed in your hands at school and afterwards,
and in which you were taught to believe. Modern historians, for the most
part, know very little, and, secondly, only tell a little of what they
know.