Etext prepared by Jonathan Ingram William Flis and the Project GutenbergOnline Distributed Proofreading Team_The Adventures of Hugh Trevor_byThomas Holcroft  TIS SO PAT TO ALL THE TRIBE  EACH SWEARS THAT WAS LEVELLED AT ME  GAYVOLUME IPREFACEEvery man of determined inquiry who will ask without the dread ofdiscovering more than he dares believe what is divinity what is lawwhat is physic what is war and what is trade will have great reasonto doubt at some times of the virtue and at others of the utility ofeach of these different employments What profession should a man ofprinciple who is anxiously desirous to promote individual and generalhappiness chuse for his son The question has perplexed many parentsand certainly deserves a serious examination Is a novel a good modefor discussing it or a proper vehicle for moral truth Of this someperhaps will be inclined to doubt Others whose intellectual powerswere indubitably of the first order have considered the art of novelwriting as very essentially connected with moral instruction Of thisopinion was the famous Turgot who we are told affirmed that moregrand moral truths had been promulgated by novel writers than by anyother class of menBut though I consider the choice of a profession as the interestingquestion agitated in the following work I have endeavoured to keepanother important inquiry continually in view This inquiry is thegrowth of intellect Philosophers have lately paid much attentionto the progress of mind the subject is with good reason become afavourite with them and the more the individual and the generalhistory of man is examined the more proofs do they discover insupport of his perfectability Man is continually impelled by thevicissitudes of life to great vicissitudes of opinion and conduct Heis a being necessarily subject to change and the inquiry of wisdomought continually to be how may he change for the better Fromindividual facts and from them alone can general knowledge beobtainedTwo men of different opinions were once conversing The one scoffed atinnate ideas instinctive principles and occult causes the other wasa believer in natural gifts and an active fabricator of suppositionsSuggest but the slightest hint and he would erect a hypothesis whichno argument at least none that he would listen to could overthrowSo convinced was he of the force of intuitive powers and naturalpropensities as existing in himself that having proposed to writea treatise to prove that apple trees might bear oysters or somethingequally true and equally important he was determined he said toseek for no exterior aid or communication from books or things ormen being convinced that the activity of his own mind would affordintuitive argument of more worth than all the adulterated andsuspicious facts that experience could affordTo this his antagonist replied he knew but of one mode of obtainingknowledge which was by the senses Whether this knowledge enteredat the eye the ear the papillary nerves the olfactory or by thatmore general sense which we call feeling was he argued of littleconsequence but at some or all of these it must enter for he hadnever discovered any other inlet If however the system of hisopponent were true he could only say that in all probability hisintended treatise would have been written in the highest perfectionhad he begun and ended it before he had been bornIf this reasoning be just I think we may conclude that the man offorty will be somewhat more informed than the infant who has butjust seen the light Deductions of a like kind will teach us thatthe collective knowledge of ages is superior to the rude dawning ofthe savage state and if this be so of which I find it difficultto doubt it surely is not absolutely impossible but that men maycontinue thus to collect knowledge and that ten thousand years henceif this good world should last so long they may possibly learntheir alphabet in something less time than we do even now in theseenlightened daysFor these reasons I have occasionally called the attention of thereader to the lessons received by the principal character of thefollowing work to the changes they produced in him and to theprogress of his understanding I conclude with adding that in myopinion all well written books that discuss the actions of men arein reality so many histories of the progress of mind and if what Inow suppose be truth it is highly advantageous to the reader to beaware of this truthCHAPTER I_My birth Family dignity insulted Resentment of my grandfatherParental traits of character_There are moments in which every man is apt to imagine that thehistory of his own life is the most important of all histories Thegloom and sunshine with which my short existence has been chequeredlead me to suppose that a narrative of these vicissitudes may beinteresting to others as well as to myselfIn the opinion of some people my misfortunes began before I was bornThe rector of