Page:The Annual Register 1758.djvu/263

 CHARACTERS.

each other. When he was ten years old, he had been at fchool four years, and was then put to arithmetic, but this embarraffed him with in- numerable difficulties, which his mafler would not take the trouble to explain, expetling that he fhoulJ content himfelf with the implicit praftice of pofitive rules. Ludwig, therefore, was fo difgufted with arithmetic, that after much fcolding and beating he went from fchool, without having learnt any thing more than reading, writing, and his catechifm.

He was then fent into the field to keep cows, and in this employment he foon became clownifr, and neg- ligent of every thing elfe; fo that the greatell part of what he had learnt was forgotten. He was afTo- ciated with the fordid and the vici- ous, and he became infenfibly like them. As he grew up he kept company with women of bad cha- racter., and abandoned himfelf to fuch pleafures as were within his reach. But a deiire of furpafiing others, that principle which is pro- duftive of every kind of greatnefs, v/as iliil living in his breail ; he remembered to have been praifed by his mafter, and preferred above his comrades when he was learning to read and write, and he was ftill defirous of the fame pleafure, though he did not know hpw to get -at it.

In the autumn of 1735, when he was about twenty years old, he bought a fmail Bibie, at the end of which was a catechifm, with refe- rences to a great number of texts, upon which the principles contain- ed in the anfwers were founded. Ludwig had never been ufed to take any thing upon trull, and was therelcre continually turning over the leaves vf his Bible, to find the

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pafTages referred to in the cate- chifm ; but this he found fo irkfomc a taflc, that he determined to have the whole at one view, and there- fore fet about to tranfcribe the cate- chifm, with all the texts at large brought into their proper places. With this exercife he filled two quires of paper, and though when he began, the charader was fcarce legible, yet before he had finifhed it was greatly improved J for an art that has been once learnt is eafily recovered.

In the month of March 1736, he was employed to receive the excife of the little diilricl in which he lived, and he found that in order to difcharge this office, it was necef- fary for him not only to write, but to be mailer of the two firfl rules cf arithmetic, addition and fub- traclion. His ambition had now an objecl ; and a defire to keep the accounts of the tax he was to gather, better than others of hiss llation, determined him once more to apply to arithmetic, however hateful thetafk,and whatever labour it might require. He now regretted, that he was without an inftruftor, and v/ould have been glad at any rate to have praclifed the rules with- out firft knowing the rationale. His mind was continually upon the ftretch to find out fome way of fup- plying this want, and at laft he recollefted that one of his fchool- fellows had a book, from which ex- amples of feveral rules were taken by the mafter to exercife the fcho- lars. He, therefore, went imme- diately in fearch of this fchool- fellow, and was overjoyed to find upon enquiry, that the book was Hill in his poireffion. Iiavin? bor- rowed this important volume, he returned home with it, and begin- nln? his Itudies as he went along,

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