My plans are reduced to two;--the first unpracticable,--the second not likely to succeed.
Plan 1. I am studying German, and in about six weeks shall be able to read that language with tolerable fluency. Now I have some thoughts of making a proposal to Robinson, the great London bookseller, of translating all the works of Schiller, which would make a portly quarto, on condition that he should pay my journey and my wife's to and from Jena, a cheap German University where Schiller resides, and allow me two guineas each quarto sheet, which would maintain me. If I could realize this scheme, I should there study chemistry and anatomy, and bring over with me all the works of Semler and Michaelis, the German theologians, and of Kant, the great German metaphysician. On my return I would commence a school for either young men at £105 each, proposing to perfect them in the following studies in this order:--1. Man as an Animal;--including the complete knowledge of anatomy, chemistry, mechanics, and optics:--2. Man as an intellectual Being;--including the ancient metaphysics, the system of Locke and Hartley--of the Scotch philosophers--and the new Kantean system:--3. Man as a Religious Being;--including an historic summary of all religions, and of the arguments for and against natural and revealed religion. Then proceeding from the individual to the aggregate of individuals, and disregarding all chronology, except that of mind, I should perfect them: 1--in the history of savage tribes; 2--of semi-barbarous nations; 3--of nations emerging from semi-barbarism; 4--of civilized states; 5--of luxurious states; 6--of revolutionary states; 7--of colonies. During these studies I should intermix the knowledge of languages, and instruct my scholars in "belles lettres", and the principles of composition.
Now, seriously, do you think that one of my scholars, thus perfected, would make a better senator than perhaps any one member in either of our Houses?--Bright bubbles of the age--ebullient brain! Gracious Heaven! that a scheme so big with advantage to this kingdom--therefore to Europe--therefore to the world--should be demolishable by one monosyllable from a bookseller's mouth!
My second plan is to become a Dissenting Minister, and adjure politics and casual literature. Preaching for hire is not right; because it must prove a strong temptation to continue to profess what I may have ceased to believe, "if ever" maturer judgment with wider and deeper reading should lessen or destroy my faith in Christianity. But though not right in itself, it may become right by the greater wrongness of the only alternative--the remaining in neediness and uncertainty. That in the one case I should be exposed to temptation is a mere contingency; that under necessitous circumstances I am exposed to great and frequent temptations is a melancholy certainty.