,,principles ,,of ,,politeness1 ,,and ,,of ,,knowing ,,the ,,world4 ,by the late ,,lord ,,chesterfield4 ,methodised and digested under distinct ,heads1 ,,with ,,additions1 ,by the ,rev4 ,dr4 ,,john ,,trusler3 ,,containing ,every ,instruction necessary to complete the ,,gentleman and ,,man ,,of ,,fashion2 to teach him a ,knowledge of ,life1 and make him well received in all ,companies4 ,,to ,,which ,,is ,,now ,,first ,,annexed ,a ,,father',s ,,legacy ,,to ,,his ,,daughters3 ,by the late ,dr4 ,,gregory1 ,,of ,,edinburgh4 ,the whole admirably calculated for the ,,improvement of ,,youth1 yet not beneath the attention of any4 ---------------------------------------- --- ,,portsmouth1 ,,new-,,hampshire3 ,,printed ,,by ,,melcher and ,,osborne4 ,m1,,dcc1,,lxxxvi4 ---------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ,illustration ,,introduction ,,to ,,the ,,portsmouth ,,edition4 ,the two parts of this work1 which have heretofore been printed separate1 are now offered to the ,public in one volume1 as a system of polite and moral instruction for both sexes3 ,this edition is critically corrected1 with the special design of furnishing ,english schools1 at a small expence1 with a proper book for reading and parsing their own language1 that the teacher may be provided with suitable means for mending the manners of his pupils1 while he informs their understandings1 by analyzing the grammatical construction1 and pointing out the beauties of the most approved style4 ,,portsmouth1 ,jan4 #aghf4 ---------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ,,advertisement4 ,the late ,lord ,,chesterfield having been universally allowed to be one of the best bred men of the age1 and most intimately acquainted with the principles and manners of mankind1 the ,editor of the following pages humbly apprehends he could not do the rising generation a greater service1 than by collecting those valuable precepts which are contained in his celebrated letters to his son1 digesting them under distinct heads1 and thereby forming a system of the most useful instruction4 ,to that end1 he has diligently selected every observation and remark that can possibly improve or inform the mind1 within the rules of morality3 and where there seemed a deficiency in any part of the system1 from the occasional chasms in ,lord ,chesterfield's correspondence1 he has endeavoured to supply it4 ,much might have been said on the subject of indelicacy1 but as instructions on that head1 to persons possessed of a liberal education1 must have been unnecessary1 they are here purposely omitted4 ,some may be apt to think1 that many things in this work are too frivolous to be mentioned2 but when it is remembered they are calculated for the multitude1 it is presumed they will be received as respectable admonitions4 ,in short1 it has been the ,editor's study to make ,lord ,chesterfield useful to every class of youth2 to lay that instruction before them1 which they with difficulty must have found amidst a heap of other matter2 in a word1 to give the very essence of his letters1 and at a tenth part of the price those letters sell for4 ---------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ,,principles ,,of ,,politeness1 c4 ,,addressed ,,to ,,every ,,young ,,gentleman4 ,as all young men1 on their first outset in life1 are in want of some experienced and friendly hand to bring them forward1 and teach them a knowledge of the world2 ,i think ,i cannot do the rising generation a greater service1 than by directing the young man's steps1 and teaching him how to make his way among the crowd4 ,i will suppose him already instructed in the principles of religion1 and necessity of moral virtues2 7for without these he must be most unhappy7 of course shall1 in a series of chapters1 point out1 under distinct heads1 the qualifications necessary to make him well received in the world2 without which1 he cannot expect to bear his part in life1 agreeably to his own wishes1 or the duty he owes to society2 and as modesty is the basis of a proper reception1 ,i shall begin with that4 ,,modesty4 ,modesty is a polite accomplishment1 and generally an attendant upon merit3 ,it is engaging to the highest degree1 and wins the heart of all our acquaintance4 ,on the contrary1 none are more disgustful in company than the impudent and presuming4 ,,the man who is1 on all occasions1 commending and speaking well of himself1 we naturally dislike4 ,on the other hand1 he who studies to conceal his own defects1 who does justice to the merit of others1 who talks but little of himself1 and that with modesty1 makes a favourable impression on the persons he is conversing with1 captivates their minds1 and gains their esteem4 ,,modesty1 however1 widely differs from an awkward bashfulness1 which is as much to be condemned as the other is to be applauded4 ,to appear simple is as ill-bred as to be impudent4 ,a young man ought to be able to come into a room and address the company1 without the least embarrassment4 ,to be out of countenance when spoken to1 and not to have an answer ready1 is ridiculous to the last degree4 ,,an awkward country fellow1 when he comes into company better than himself1 is exceedingly disconcerted4 ,he knows not what to do with his hands1 or his hat1 but either puts one of them in his pocket1 and dangles the other by his side2 or perhaps twirls his hat on his fingers1 or fumbles with the button4 ,if spoken to1 he is in a much worse situation1 he answers with the utmost difficulty1 and nearly stammers2 whereas a gentleman1 who is acquainted with life1 enters a room with gracefulness and a modest assurance1 addresses even persons he does not know1 in an easy and natural manner1 and without the least embarrassment4 ,this is the characteristic of good-breeding1 a very necessary knowledge in our intercourse with men2 for one of inferior parts1 with the behaviour of a gentleman1 is frequently better received than a man of sense1 with the address and manners of a clown4 ,,ignorance and vice are the only things we need be ashamed of2 steer clear of these1 and you may go into any company you will3 ,not that ,i would have a young man throw off all dread of appearing abroad2 as a fear of offending1 or being disesteemed1 will make him observe a proper decorum4 ,some persons from experiencing the inconveniencies of false modesty1 have run into the other extreme1 and acquired the character of impudent3 ,this is as great a fault as the other4 ,a well-bred man keeps himself within the two1 and steers the middle way4 ,he is easy and firm in every company1 is modest but not bashful1 steady but not impudent4 ,he copies the manners of the better people1 and conforms to their customs with ease and attention4 ,,till we can present ourselves in all companies with coolness and unconcern1 we can never present ourselves well2 nor will a man ever be supposed to have kept good company1 or ever be acceptable in such company1 if he cannot appear there easy and unembarrassed4 ,a modest assurance1 in every part of life1 is the most advantageous qualification we can possibly acquire4 ,,instead of becoming insolent1 a man of sense1 under a consciousness of merit1 is more modest4 ,he behaves himself indeed with firmness1 but without the least presumption4 ,the man who is ignorant of his own merit1 is no less a fool than he who is constantly displaying it4 ,a man of understanding avails himself of his abilities1 but never boasts of them2 whereas the timid and bashful can never push himself in life1 be his merit as great as it will2 he will be always kept behind by the forward and bustling4 ,a man of abilities1 and acquainted with life1 will stand as firm in defence of his own rights1 and pursue his plans as steadily and unmoved1 as the most impudent man alive2 but then he does it with a seeming modesty4 ,thus manner is every thing2 what is impudence in one1 is proper assurance only in another2 for firmness is commendable1 but an overbearing conduct is disgustful4 ,,forwardness being the very reverse of modesty1 follow rather than lead the company2 that is1 join in discourse upon subjects1 rather than start one of your own3 ,if you have parts1 you will have opportunities enough of shewing them on every topic of conversation1 and if you have none1 it is better to expose yourself upon a subject of other people's than of your own4 ,,but1 be particularly careful not to speak of yourself1 if you can help it4 ,an impudent fellow lugs in himself abruptly upon all occasions1 and is ever the hero of his own story4 ,others will colour their arrogance with1 #8,it may seem strange1 indeed1 that ,i should talk in this manner of myself2 it is what ,i by no means like1 and should never do1 if ,i had not been cruelly and unjustly accused2 but when my character is attacked1 it is a justice ,i owe to myself1 to defend it4' ,this veil is too thin not to be seen through on the first inspection4 ,,others again1 with more art1 will modestly boast of all the principal virtues1 by calling those virtues weaknesses1 and saying1 they are so unfortunate as to fall into weaknesses4 #8,i cannot see persons suffer1' says one of this cast1 #8without relieving them2 though my circumstances are very unable to afford it4' #8,i cannot avoid speaking truth1 though it is often very imprudent1' and so on4 ,,this angling for praise is so prevailing a principle1 that it frequently stoops to the lowest objects4 ,men will often boast of doing that1 which1 if true1 would be rather a disgrace to them than otherwise4 ,one man affirms that he rode twenty miles within the hour2 'tis probably a lie2 but suppose he did1 what then8 ,he had a good horse under him1 and is a good jockey4 ,another swears he has often at a sitting1 drank five or six bottles to his own share4 ,out of respect to him1 ,i will believe him a liar1 for ,i would not wish to think him a beast4 ,,these and many more are the follies of idle people1 which1 while they think they procure them esteem1 in reality make them despised4 ,,to avoid this contempt1 therefore1 never speak of yourself at all1 unless necessity obliges you2 and even then1 take care to do it in such a manner1 that it may not be construed in to fishing for applause4 ,whatever perfections you may have1 be assured1 people will find them out2 but whether they do or not1 nobody will take them upon your own word4 ,the less you say of yourself1 the more the world will give you credit for2 and the more you say1 the less they will believe you4 ,,lying4 ,,of all the vices1 there is no one more criminal1 more mean1 and more ridiculous1 than lying4 ,the end we design by it is very seldom accomplished1 for lies are always found out1 at one time or other2 and yet there are persons who give way to this vice1 who are otherwise of good principles1 and have not been ill educated4 ,,lies generally proceed from vanity1 cowardice1 and a revengeful disposition1 and sometimes from a mistaken notion of self-defence4 ,,he who tells a malicious lie1 with a view of injuring the person he speaks of1 may gratify his wish for a while1 but will1 in the end1 find it recoil upon himself2 for1 as soon as he is detected 7and detected he most certainly will be7 he is despised for the infamous attempt1 and whatever he may say hereafter of that person1 will be considered as false1 whether it be so or not4 ,,if a man lies1 shuffles1 or equivocates1 for1 in fact1 they are all alike1 by way of excuse for any thing he has said or done1 he aggravates the offence rather than lessens it2 for the person to whom the lie is told has a right to know the truth1 or there would have been no occasion to have framed a falsehood4 ,this person1 of course1 will think himself ill treated for being a second time affronted2 for what can be a greater affront than an attempt to impose upon any man's understanding8 ,besides1 lying1 in excuse for a fault1 betrays fear1 than which nothing is more dastardly1 and unbecoming the character of a gentleman4 ,,there is nothing more manly1 or more noble1 if we have done wrong1 than frankly to own it4 ,it is the only way of meeting forgiveness4 ,indeed1 confessing a fault and asking pardon1 with great minds1 is considered as a sufficient atonement4 #8,i have been betrayed into an error1' or #8,i have injured you1 ,sir1 and am heartily ashamed of it1 and sorry for it1' has frequently disarmed the person injured1 and where he would have been our enemy1 has made him our friend4 ,,there are persons also1 whose vanity leads them to tell a thousand lies4 ,they persuade themselves1 that if it be no way injurious to others1 it is harmless and innocent1 and they shelter their falsehoods under the softer name of untruths4 ,these persons are foolish enough to imagine1 that if they can recite any thing wonderful1 they draw the attention of the company1 and if they themselves are the objects of that wonder1 they are looked up to as persons extraordinary4 ,this has made many men to see things that never were in being1 hear things that never were said1 atchieve feats that never were attempted1 dealing always in the marvellous4 ,such may be assured1 however unwilling the persons they are conversing with may be to laugh in their faces1 that they hold them secretly in the highest contempt2 for he who will tell a lie thus idly1 will not scruple to tell a greater1 where his interest is concerned4 ,rather than any person should doubt of my veracity for one minute1 ,i would deprive myself of telling abroad either what ,i had really seen or heard1 if such things did not carry with them the face of probability4 ,,others again will boast of the great respect they meet with in certain companies2 of the honors that are continually heaped on them there2 of the great price they give for every thing they purchase2 and this to be thought of consequence2 but1 unless such people have the best and most accurate memory1 they will1 perhaps1 very soon after1 contradict their former assertions1 and subject themselves to contempt and derision4 ,,remember then as long as you live1 that nothing but strict truth can carry you through life with honor and credit4 ,liars are not only disagreeable but dangerous companions1 and1 when known1 will ever be shunned by men of understanding4 ,besides1 as the greatest liars are generally the greatest fools1 a man who addicts himself to this detestable vice1 will not only be looked upon as vulgar1 but will never be considered as a man of sense4 ,,good-,,breeding4 ,,void of good-breeding1 every other qualification will be imperfect1 unadorned1 and to a certain degree unavailing4 ,,good-,,breeding being the result of good sense and good nature1 is it not wonderful that people possessed of the one1 should be deficient in the other8 ,the modes of it1 varying according to persons1 places1 and circumstances1 cannot indeed be acquired otherwise than by time and observation1 but the substance is every where and always the same4 ,,what good morals are to society in general1 good manners are to particular ones2 their band and security4 ,of all actions1 next to that of performing a good one1 the consciousness of rendering a civility is the most grateful4 ,,we seldom see a person1 let him be ever so ill-bred1 want in respect to those whom he acknowledges to be his superiors2 the manner of shewing this respect1 then1 is all ,i contend for4 ,the well-bred man expresses it naturally and easily1 while he who is unused to good company expresses it awkwardly4 ,study1 then1 to shew that respect which every one wishes to shew1 in an easy and grateful way2 but this must be learnt by observation4 ,,in company with your equals1 or in mixed companies1 a greater latitude may be taken in your behaviour2 yet1 it should never exceed the bounds of decency2 for1 though no one in this case1 can claim any distinguished marks of respect1 every one is entitled to civility and good manners4 ,a man need not1 for example1 fear to put his hands in his pockets1 take snuff1 sit1 stand1 or occasionally walk about the room2 but it would be highly unbecoming to whistle1 wear his hat1 loosen his garters1 or throw himself across the chairs4 ,such liberties are offensive to our equals1 and insulting to our inferiors4 ,easiness of carriage by no means implies inattention and carelessness4 ,no one is at liberty to act1 in all respects1 as he pleases2 but is bound by the laws of good manners to behave with decorum4 ,,let a man talk to you ever so stupidly or frivolously1 not to pay some attention to what he says1 is savageness to the greatest degree4 ,nay1 if he even forces his conversation to you1 it is worse than rudeness not to listen to him2 for your inattention in this case1 tells him1 in express terms1 that you think him a blockhead and not worth the hearing4 ,now1 if such behaviour is rude to men1 it is much more so to women1 who1 be their rank what it will1 have1 on account of their sex1 a claim to officious attention from the men4 ,their little wants and whims1 their likes and dislikes1 and even their impertinences1 are particularly attended to and flattered1 and their very thoughts and wishes guessed at and instantly gratified1 by every well-bred man4 ,,in promiscuous companies1 you should vary your address1 agreeably to the different ages of the persons you speak to4 ,it would be rude and absurd to talk of your amours or your pleasures to men of certain dignity and gravity1 to clergymen1 or men in years2 but still you should be as easy with them as with others1 your manner only should be varied2 you should1 if possible1 double your respect and attention to them2 and were you to insinuate occasionally1 that from their observation and experience you wish to profit1 you would insensibly win their esteem2 for flattery1 if not fulsome and gross1 is agreeable to all4 ,,when invited to dinner or supper1 you must never usurp to yourself the best places1 the best dishes1 c4 but always decline them1 and offer them to others1 except1 indeed1 you are offered any thing by a superior1 when it would be a rudeness1 if you liked it1 not to accept it immediately1 without the least apology4--,thus1 for example1 was a superior1 the master of the table1 to offer you a thing of which there was but one1 to pass it to the person next you1 would be indirectly charging him that offered it to you1 with a want of good manners and proper respect to his company2 or1 if you were the only stranger present1 it would be a rudeness if you make a feint of refusing it with the customary apology1 #8,i cannot think of taking it from you1 sir2' or1 #8,i am sorry to deprive you of it2' as it is supposed he is conscious of his own rank1 and if he chose not to give it1 would not have offered it2 your apology therefore1 in this case1 is putting him upon an equality with yourself4 ,in like manner1 it is rudeness to draw back when requested by a superior to pass a door first1 or to step into a carriage before him4 ,in short1 it would be endless to particularise all the instances in which a well-bred man shews his politeness in good company1 such as not yawning1 singing1 whistling1 warming his breech at the fire1 lounging1 putting his legs upon the chairs1 and the like1 familiarities every man's good sense must condemn1 and good-breeding abhor4 ,,but1 good-breeding consists in more than merely not being ill-bred4 ,to return a bow1 speak when you are spoken to1 and say nothing rude1 are such negative acts of good-breeding1 that they are little more than not being a brute4 ,would it not be a very poor commendation of any man's cleanliness1 to say that he was not offensive8 ,if we wish for the good will and esteem of our acquaintance1 our good-breeding must be active1 cheerful1 officious and seducing4 ,,for example1 should you invite any one to dine or sup with you1 recollect whether ever you had observed them to prefer one thing to another1 and endeavour to procure that thing2 when at table1 say1 #8,at such a time1 ,i think you seemed to give this dish a preference1 ,i therefore ordered it4' #8,this is the wine ,i observed you like best1 ,i have therefore been at some pains to procure it4' ,trifling as these things may appear1 they prove an attention to the person they are said to2 and as attention in trifles is the test of respect1 the compliment will not be lost4 ,i ,,need only refer you to your own breast4 ,how have these little attentions1 when shewn you by others1 flattered that self-love which no man is free from8 ,they incline and attach us to that person1 and prejudice us afterwards1 to all that he says or does4 ,the declaration of the women in a great degree stamps a man's reputation of being either ill or well-bred2 you must then1 in a manner1 overwhelm them with these attentions2 they are used to them1 and naturally expect them1 and to do them justice1 they are seldom lost upon them4 ,you must be sedulous to wait upon them1 pick up with alacrity any thing they drop1 and be very officious in procuring their carriages or their chairs in public places2 be blind to what you should not see1 and deaf to what you should not hear4 ,opportunities of shewing these attentions are continually presenting themselves2 but in case they should not1 you must study to create them4 ,,if ever you would be esteemed by the women1 your conversation to them should be always respectful1 lively1 and addressed to their vanity4 ,every thing you say or do1 should tend to shew a regard to their beauty or good sense3 ,even men are not without their vanities of one kind or another1 and flattering that vanity by words and looks of approbation1 is one of the principal characters of good-breeding4 ,,address and manners1 with weak persons1 who are actually three-fourths of the world1 are every thing2 and even people of the best understanding are taken in with them4 ,where the heart is not won1 and the eye pleased1 the mind will be seldom on our side4 ,,in short1 learning and erudition1 without good-breeding1 are tiresome and pedantic2 and an ill-bred man is as unfit for good company1 as he will be unwelcome in it4 ,nay1 he is full as unfit for business as for company4 ,make1 then1 good-breeding the great object of your thoughts and actions4 ,be particularly observant of1 and endeavour to imitate1 the behaviour and manners of such as are distinguished by their politeness2 and be persuaded1 that good-breeding is to all worldly qualifications1 what charity is to all ,christian virtues2 it adorns merit1 and often covers the want of it4 ,,genteel ,,carriage4 ,,next to good-breeding is a genteel manner and carriage1 wholly free from those ill habits and awkward actions1 which many very worthy persons are addicted to4 ,a ,,genteel manner of behaviour1 how trifling so-ever it may seem1 is of the utmost consequence in private life4 ,men of very inferior parts have been esteemed1 merely for their genteel carriage and good-breeding1 while sensible men have given disgust for want of it4 ,there is something or other that prepossesses us at first sight1 in favour of a well-bred man1 and makes us wish to like him4 ,,when an awkward fellow first comes into a room1 he attempts to bow1 and his sword1 if he wears one1 goes between his legs1 and nearly throws him down4 ,confused and ashamed1 he stumbles to the upper end of the room1 and seats himself in the very chair he should not4 ,he there begins playing with his hat1 which he presently drops2 and recovering his hat1 he lets fall his cane2 and in picking up his cane1 down goes his hat again2 thus 'tis a considerable time before he is adjusted4 ,when his tea or coffee is handed to him1 he spreads his handkerchief upon his knees1 scalds his mouth1 drops either the cup or the saucer1 and spills the tea or coffee in his lap4 ,at dinner he is more uncommonly awkward2 there he tucks his napkin through a button-hole1 which tickles his chin1 and occasions him to make a variety of wry faces2 he seats himself upon the edge of the chair1 at so great a distance from the table1 that he frequently drops his meat between his plate and his mouth2 he holds his knife1 fork and spoon differently from other people2 eats with his knife1 to the manifest danger of his mouth2 picks his teeth with his fork1 rakes his mouth with his finger1 and puts his spoon which has been in his throat a dozen times1 into the dish again4 ,if he is to carve1 he cannot hit the joint1 but in labouring to cut through the bone1 splashes the sauce over every body's cloaths4 ,he generally daubs himself all over1 his elbows are in the next person's plate1 and he is up to the knuckles in soup and grease4 ,if he drinks1 it is with his mouth full1 interrupting the whole company with #8,to your good health1 sir1' and #8,my service to you2' perhaps coughs in his glass1 and be-sprinkles the whole table4 ,further1 he has perhaps a number of disagreeable tricks1 he snuffs up his nose1 picks it with his fingers1 blows it1 and looks in his handkerchief1 crams his hands first into his bosom1 and next into his breeches4 ,in short1 he neither dresses nor acts like any other person1 but is particularly awkward in every thing he does4 ,all this1 ,i own1 has nothing in it criminal2 but it is such an offence to good manners and good-breeding1 that it is universally despised2 it makes a man ridiculous in every company1 and1 of course1 ought carefully to be avoided by every one who would wish to please4 ,,from this picture of the ill-bred man1 you will easily discover that of the well-bred2 for you may readily judge what you ought to do1 when you are told what you ought not to do2 a little attention to the manners of those who have seen the world1 will make a proper behaviour habitual and familiar to you4 ,,actions1 that would otherwise be pleasing1 frequently become ridiculous by the manner of doing them4 ,if a lady drop her fan in company1 the worst-bred man would immediately pick it up1 and give it to her2 the best bred man can do no more2 but then he does it in a graceful manner1 that is sure to please2 whereas the other would do it so awkwardly as to be laughed at4 ,,you may also know a well-bred person by his manner of sitting4 ,ashamed and confused1 the awkward man sits in his chair stiff and bolt upright1 whereas the man of fashion1 is easy in every position2 instead of lolling or lounging as he sits1 he leans with elegance1 and by varying his attitudes1 shews that he has been used to good company4 ,let it be one part of your study then1 to learn to sit genteely in different companies1 to loll gracefully1 where you are authorized to take that liberty1 and sit up respectfully1 where that freedom is not allowable4 ,,in short1 you cannot conceive how advantageous a graceful carriage and a pleasing address are1 upon all occasions2 they ensnare the affections1 seal a prepossession in our favour1 and play about the heart till they engage it4 ,,now to acquire a graceful air1 you must attend to your dancing2 no one can either sit1 stand or walk well1 unless he dances well4 ,and1 in learning to dance1 be particularly attentive to the motion of your arms1 for a stiffness in the wrist will make any man look awkward4 ,if a man walks well1 presents himself well in company1 wears his hat well1 moves his head properly1 and his arms gracefully1 it is almost all that is necessary4 ,,there is also an awkwardness in speech1 that naturally falls under this head1 and ought to and may be guarded against2 such as forgetting names1 and mistaking one name for another2 to speak of ,mr4 ,what-d'ye-call-him1 or ,you-know-who1 ,mrs4 ,thingum1 ,what's-her-name1 or ,how-d'ye-call-her1 is exceedingly awkward and vulgar4 ,it is the same to address people by improper titles1 as sir for my lord2 to begin a story without being able to finish it1 and break off in the middle1 with1 #8,i have forgot the rest4' ,,our voice and manner of speaking too1 should likewise be attended to4 ,some will mumble over their words1 so as not to be intelligible1 and others will speak so fast as not to be understood1 and1 in doing this1 will spatter and spit in your face2 some will bawl as if they were speaking to the deaf2 others will speak so low as scarcely to be heard2 and many will put their face so close to yours1 as to offend you with their breath4 ,all these habits are horrid and disgustful1 but may easily be got the better of1 with care4 ,they are the vulgar characteristics of a low-bred man1 or are proofs that very little pains have been bestowed in his education4 ,in short1 an attention to these little matters is of greater importance than you are aware of2 many sensible men having lost ground for want of these little graces1 and many1 possessed of these perfections alone1 having made their way through life1 who otherwise would not have been noticed4 ,,cleanliness ,,of ,,person4 ,,but1 as no one can please in company1 however graceful in his air1 unless he be clean and neat in his person1 this qualification comes next to be considered4 ,,negligence of one's person not only implies an unsufferable indolence1 but an indifference whether we please or not4 ,it betrays an insolence and affectation1 arising from a presumption1 that we are sure of pleasing1 without having recourse to those means which many are obliged to use4 ,,he who is not thoroughly clean in his person1 will be offensive to all he converses with4 ,a particular regard to the cleanliness of your mouth1 teeth1 hands and nails1 is but common decency4 ,a foul mouth and unclean hands1 are certain marks of vulgarity2 the first is the cause of an offensive breath1 which nobody can bear1 and the last is declarative of dirty work2 one may always know a gentleman by the state of his hands and nails4 ,the flesh at the roots should be kept back1 so as to shew the semicircles at the bottom of the nails2 the edges of the nails should never be cut down below the ends of the fingers1 nor should they be suffered to grow longer than the fingers4 ,when the nails are cut down to the quick1 it is a shrewd sign that the man is a mechanic1 to whom long nails would be troublesome1 or that he gets his bread by fiddling2 and if they are longer than his fingers' ends1 and encircled with a black rim1 it foretells he has been laboriously and meanly employed1 and too fatigued to clean himself2 a good apology for want of cleanliness in a mechanic1 but the greatest disgrace that can attend a gentleman4 ,,these things may appear too insignificant to be mentioned2 but when it is considered that a thousand little nameless things1 which every one feels1 but no one can describe1 conspire to form that whole of pleasing1 ,i hope you will not call them trifling4 ,besides1 a clean shirt and a clean person are as necessary to health1 as not to offend other people4 ,it is a maxim with me1 which ,i have lived to see verified1 that he who is negligent at twenty years of age1 will be a sloven at forty1 and intolerable at fifty4 ,,dress4 ,,neatness of person1 ,i observed1 was as necessary as cleanliness2 of course1 some attention must be paid to your dress4 ,,such is the absurdity of the times1 that to pass well with the world1 we must adopt some of its customs1 be they ridiculous or not4 ,,in the first place1 to neglect one's dress is to affront all the female part of our acquaintance4 ,the women in particular pay an attention to their dress2 to neglect therefore yours will displease them1 as it would be tacitly taxing them with vanity1 and declaring that you thought them not worth that respect which every body else does4 ,and1 as ,i have mentioned before1 it being the women who stamp a young man's credit in the fashionable world1 if you do not make yourself agreeable to them1 you will assuredly lose ground among the men4 ,,dress1 as trifling as it may appear to a man of understanding1 prepossesses on the first appearance1 which is frequently decisive4 ,and indeed we form some opinion of a man's sense and character from his dress4 ,any exceeding of the fashion1 or any affectation whatever in dress1 argues a weakness in understanding1 and nine times in ten1 it will be found so4 ,,there are few young fellows but what display some character or other in this shape4 ,some would be thought fearless and brave2 these wear a black cravat1 a short coat and waistcoat1 an uncommon long sword hanging to their knees1 a large hat fiercely cocked1 and are flash all over4 ,others affect to be country squires2 these will go about in buckskin breeches1 brown frocks1 and great oaken cudgels in their hands1 slouched hats1 with their hair undressed and tucked up under them to an enormous size1 and imitate grooms and country boobies so well externally1 that there is not the least doubt of their resembling them as well internally4 ,others1 again1 paint and powder themselves so much1 and dress so finically1 as leads us to suppose they are only women in boy's cloaths4 ,now a sensible man carefully avoids all this1 or any other affectation4 ,he dresses as fashionably and as well as persons of the best families and best sense2 if he exceeds them1 he is a coxcomb2 if he dresses worse1 he is unpardonable4 ,,dress yourself fine1 then1 if possible1 or plain1 agreeably to the company you are in2 that is1 conform to the dress of others1 and avoid the appearance of being tumbled4 ,imitate those reasonable people of your own age1 whose dress is neither remarked as too neglected or too much studied4 ,take care to have your clothes well made1 in the fashion1 and to fit you1 or you will1 after all1 appear awkward4 ,when once dressed1 think no more of it2 shew no fear of discomposing your dress1 but let all your motions be as easy and unembarrassed1 as if you were at home in your dishabille4 ,,elegance ,,of ,,expression4 ,,having mentioned elegance of person1 ,i will proceed to elegance of expression4 ,,it is not one or two qualifications alone complete the gentleman2 it must be a union of many2 and graceful speaking is as essential as gracefulness of person4 ,every man cannot be a harmonious speaker2 a roughness or coarseness of voice may prevent it2 but if there are no natural imperfections1 if a man does not stammer or lisp1 or has not lost his teeth1 he may speak gracefully2 nor will all these defects1 if he has a mind to it1 prevent him from speaking correctly4 ,,nobody can attend with pleasure to a bad speaker4 ,one who tells his story ill1 be it ever so important1 will tire even the most patient4 ,if you have been present at the performance of a good tragedy1 you have doubtless been sensible of the good effects of a speech well delivered2 how much it has interested and affected you2 and on the contrary1 how much an ill spoken one has disgusted you4 ',tis the same in common conversation2 he who speaks deliberately1 distinctly and correctly3 ,he who makes use of the best words to express himself1 and varies his voice according to the nature of the subject1 will always please1 while the thick or hasty speaker1 he who mumbles out a set of ill-chosen words1 utters them ingrammatically1 or with a dull monotony1 will tire and disgust4 ,be assured then1 the air1 the gesture1 the looks of a speaker1 a proper accent1 a just emphasis1 and tuneful cadence1 are full as necessary to please and be attended to1 as the subject matter itself4 ,,people may talk what they will of solid reasoning and sound sense2 without the graces and ornaments of language1 they will neither please nor persuade4 ,in common discourse1 even trifles elegantly expressed will be better received than the best of arguments homespun and unadorned4 ,a ,,good way to acquire a graceful utterance is to read aloud to some friend every day1 and beg of him to set you right1 in case you read too fast1 do not observe the proper stops1 lay a wrong emphasis1 or utter your words indistinctly4 ,you may even read aloud to yourself1 where such a friend is not at hand1 and you will find your own ear a good corrector4 ,take care to open your teeth when you read or speak1 and articulate every word distinctly2 which last cannot be done1 but by sounding the final letter4 ,but above all1 endeavour to vary your voice1 according to the matter1 and avoid a monotony4 ,by a daily attention to this1 it will1 in a little time1 become easy and habitual to you4 ,,pay an attention also to your looks and your gestures1 when talking even on the most trifling subjects2 things appear very different according as they are expressed1 looked and delivered4 ,,now1 if it is necessary to attend so particularly to our manner of speaking1 it is much more so1 with respect to the matter4 ,fine turns of expression1 a genteel and correct style1 are ornaments as requisite to common sense1 as polite behaviour and an elegant address are to common good manners2 they are great assistants in the point of pleasing4 ,a gentleman1 'tis true1 may be known in the meanest garb1 but it admits not of a doubt1 that he would be better received into good company1 genteelly and fashionably dressed1 than if he appeared in dirt and tatters4 ,,be careful then of your style upon all occasions2 whether you write or speak1 study for the best words and best expressions1 even in common conversation1 or the most familiar letters4 ,this will prevent your speaking in a hurry1 than which nothing is more vulgar2 though you may be a little embarrassed at first1 time and use will render it easy4 ,it is no such difficult thing to express ourselves well on subjects we are thoroughly acquainted with1 if we think before we speak2 and no one should presume to do otherwise4 ,when you have said a thing1 if you did not reflect before1 be sure to do it afterwards2 consider with yourself1 whether you could not have expressed yourself better2 and if you are in doubt of the propriety or elegancy of any word1 search for it in some dictionary1#a or some good author1 while you remember it3 ,never be sparing of your trouble while you would wish to improve1 and my word for it1 a very little time will make this matter habitual4 ,footnote #a3 ,johnson's folio ,dictionary you will find very serviceable2 and the ,difference between ,words reputed synonimous2 a work in two volumes1 written by me some years ago1 and published by ,dodsley4 ,,in order to speak grammatically1 and to express yourself pleasingly1 ,i would recommend it to you to translate often any language you are acquainted with into ,english1 and to correct such translation till the words1 their order1 and the periods1 are agreeable to your own ear4 ,,vulgarism in language is another distinguishing mark of bad company and education4 ,expressions may be correct in themselves1 and yet be vulgar1 owing to their not being fashionable2 for language and manners are both established by the usage of people of fashion4 ,,the conversation of a low-bred man is filled up with proverbs and hackneyed sayings4 ,instead of observing that tastes are different1 and that most men have one peculiar to themselves1 he will give you1 #8,what is one man's meat is another man's poison2' or1 #8,every one to their liking1 as the old woman said1 when she killed her cow4' ,he has ever some favourite word1 which he lugs in upon all occasions1 right or wrong2 such as vastly angry1 vastly kind2 devilish ugly1 devilish handsome2 immensely great1 immensely little4 ,even his pronunciation carries the mark of vulgarity along with it2 he calls the earth1 yearth2 finan'ces1 fin'ances2 he goes to words1 and not towards such a place4 ,he affects to use hard words1 to give him the appearance of a man of learning1 but frequently mistakes their meaning1 and seldom1 if ever1 pronounces them properly4 ,,all this must be avoided1 if you would not be supposed to have kept company with footmen and housemaids4 ,never have recourse to proverbial or vulgar sayings2 use neither favourite nor hard words1 but seek for the most elegant2 be careful in the management of them1 and depend on it your labour will not be lost2 for nothing is more engaging than a fashionable and polite address4 ,,address1 ,,phraseology1 ,,and ,,small-,,talk4 ,,in all good company1 we meet with a certain manner1 phraseology1 and general conversation1 that distinguish the man of fashion4 ,these can only be acquired by frequenting good company1 and being particularly attentive to all that passes there4 ,,when invited to dine or sup at the house of any well-bred man1 observe how he does the honors of his table1 and mark his manner of treating his company4 ,,attend to the compliments of congratulation or condolence that he pays2 and take notice of his address to his superiors1 his equals and his inferiors2 nay1 his very looks and tone of voice1 are worth your attention1 for we cannot please without a union of them all4 ,,there is a certain distinguishing diction that marks the man of fashion1 a certain language of conversation that every gentleman should be master of4 ,saying to a man just married1 #8,i wish you joy1' or to one who has lost his wife1 #8,i am sorry for your loss1' and both perhaps with an unmeaning countenance1 may be civil1 but it is nevertheless vulgar4 ,a man of fashion will express the same thing more elegantly1 and with a look of sincerity1 that shall attract the esteem of the person he speaks to4 ,he will advance to the one1 with warmth and cheerfulness1 and perhaps squeezing him by the hand1 will say1 #8,believe me1 my dear ,sir1 ,i have scarce words to express the joy ,i feel1 upon your happy alliance with such or such a family1' c4 ,to the other in affliction1 he will advance slower1 and with a peculiar composure of voice and countenance1 begin his compliments of condolence with1 #8,i hope1 ,sir1 you will do me the justice to be persuaded1 that ,i am not insensible of your unhappiness1 that ,i take part in your distress1 and shall ever be affected where you are so4' ,,your first address to1 and indeed all your conversation with1 your superiors1 should be open1 cheerful and respectful2 with your equals warm and animated2 with your inferiors1 hearty1 free and unreserved4 ,,there is a fashionable kind of small-talk1 which however trifling it may be thought1 has its use in mixed companies3 ,of course you should endeavour to acquire it4 ,by small-talk1 ,i mean a good deal to say on unimportant matters2 for example1 foods1 the flavour and growth of wines1 and the chit-chat of the day4 ,such conversation will serve to keep off serious subjects1 that might sometimes create disputes4 ,this chit-chat is chiefly to be learned by frequenting the company of the ladies4 ,,observation4 ,,as the art of pleasing is to be learnt only by frequenting the best companies1 we must endeavor to pick it up in such companies by observation2 for1 it is not sense and knowledge alone that will acquire esteem2 these certainly are the first and necessary foundations for pleasing1 but they will by no means do1 unless attended with manners and attentions4 ,,there have been people who have frequented the first companies all their life time1 and yet have never got rid of their natural stiffness and awkwardness2 but have continued as vulgar as if they were never out of a servant's hall3 ,this has been owing to carelessness1 and a want of attention to the manners and behaviour of others4 ,,there are a great many people likewise who busy themselves the whole day1 and who in fact do nothing4 ,they have possibly taken up a book for two or three hours1 but from a certain inattention that grows upon them the more it is indulged1 know no more of the contents than if they had not looked into it2 nay1 it is impossible for any one to retain what he reads1 unless he reflects and reasons upon it as he goes on4 ,when they have thus lounged away an hour or two1 they will saunter into company1 without attending to any thing that passes there2 but1 if they think at all1 are thinking of some trifling matter that ought not to occupy their attention2 thence perhaps they go to the play1 where they stare at the company and the lights1 without attending to the piece1 the very thing they went to see4 ,in this manner they wear away their hours1 that might otherwise be employed to their improvement and advantage4 ,this silly suspension of thought they would pass for absence of mind--ridiculous6--,wherever you are1 let me recommend it to you to pay an attention to all that passes2 observe the characters of the persons you are with1 and the subjects of their conversation2 listen to every thing that is said1 see every thing that is done1 and 7according to the vulgar saying7 have your eyes and your ears about you4 ,a ,,continual inattention to matters that occur1 is the characteristic of a weak mind2 the man who gives way to it1 is little else than a trifler1 a blank in society1 which every sensible person overlooks2 surely what is worth doing1 is worth doing well1 and nothing can be well done1 if not properly attended to4 ,when ,i hear a man say1 on being asked about any thing that was said or done in his presence1 #8that truly he did not mind it4' ,i am ready to knock the fool down4 ,why did not he mind it8--,what else had he to do8--,a man of sense and fashion never makes use of this paltry plea1 he never complains of a treacherous memory1 but attends to and remembers every thing that is either said or done4 ,,whenever1 then1 you go into good company1 that is the company of people of fashion1 observe carefully their behaviour1 their address and their manner2 imitate them as far as in your power4 ,your attention1 if possible1 should be so ready as to observe every person in the room at once1 their motions1 their looks1 and their turns of expression1 and that without staring1 or seeming to be an observer4 ,this kind of observation may be acquired by care and practice1 and will be found of the utmost advantage to you1 in the course of life4 ,,absence ,,of ,,mind4 ,,having mentioned absence of mind1 let me be more particular concerning it4 ,,what the world calls an absent man1 is generally either a very affected one1 or a very weak one2 but whether weak or affected1 he is1 in company1 a very disagreeable man4 ,lost in thought1 or possibly in no thought at all1 he is a stranger to every one present1 and to every thing that passes2 he knows not his best friends1 is deficient in every act of good manners1 unobservant of the actions of the company1 and insensible to his own4 ,his answers are quite the reverse of what they ought to be2 talk to him of one thing1 he replies1 as of another4 ,he forgets what he said last1 leaves his hat in one room1 his cane in another1 and his sword in a third2 nay1 if it was not for his buckles1 he would even leave his shoes behind him4 ,neither his arms nor his legs seem to be a part of his body1 and his head is never in a right position4 ,he joins not in the general conversation1 except it be by fits and starts1 as if awaking from a dream3 ,i attribute this either to weakness or affectation4 ,his shallow mind is possibly not able to attend to more than one thing at a time2 or he would be supposed wrap'd up in the investigation of some very important matter4 ,such men as ,sir ,isaac ,newton or ,mr4 ,locke1 might occasionally have some excuse for absence of mind6 ,it might proceed from that intenseness of thought which was necessary at all times for the scientific subjects they were studying2 but1 for a young man1 and a man of the world1 who has no such plea to make1 absence of mind is rudeness to the company1 and deserves the severest censure4 ,,however insignificant a company may be2 however trifling their conversation2 while you are with them1 do not shew them1 by an inattention1 that you think them trifling2 that can never be the way to please1 but rather fall in with their weakness than otherwise2 for to mortify1 or shew the least contempt to those we are in company with1 is the greatest rudeness we can be guilty of1 and what few can forgive4 ,i ,,never yet found a man inattentive to the person he feared1 or the woman he loved2 which convinces me1 that absence of mind is to be got the better of1 if we think proper to make the trial2 and believe me1 it is always worth the attempt4 ,,absence of mind is a tacit declaration1 that those we are in company with1 are not worth attending to2 and what can be a greater affront8----,besides1 can an absent man improve by what is said or done in his presence8 ,no2 he may frequent the best companies for years together1 and all to no purpose4 ,in short1 a man is neither fit for business nor conversation1 unless he can attend to the object before him1 be that object what it will4 ,,knowledge ,,of ,,the ,,world4 ,a ,,knowledge of the world1 by our own experience and observation1 is so necessary1 that1 without it1 we shall act very absurdly1 and frequently give offence1 when we do not mean it4 ,all the learning and parts in the world1 will not secure us from it4 ,without an acquaintance with life1 a man may say very good things1 but time them so ill1 and address them so improperly1 that he had much better be silent4 ,full of himself1 and his own business1 and inattentive to the circumstances and situations of those he converses with1 he vents it without the least discretion1 says things that he ought not to say1 confuses some1 shocks others1 and puts the whole company in pain1 lest what he utters next should prove worse than the last4 ,the best direction ,i can give you in this matter1 is rather to fall in with the conversation of others1 than start a subject of your own2 rather strive to put them more in conceit with themselves1 than to draw their attention to you4 ,a ,,novice in life1 he who knows little of mankind1 but what he collects from books1 lays it down as a maxim1 that most men love flattery2 in order therefore to please1 he will flatter4 ,but how8 ,without regard either to circumstances or occasion4 ,instead of those delicate touches1 those soft tints1 that serve to heighten the piece1 he lays on his colours with a heavy hand1 and daubs1 where he means to adorn2 in other words1 he will flatter so unseasonably1 and at the same time so grossly1 that while he wishes to please1 he puts out of countenance1 and is sure to offend4 ,on the contrary1 a man of the world1 one who has made life his study1 knows the power of flattery as well as he2 but1 then1 he knows how to apply it2 he watches the opportunity1 and does it indirectly1 by inference1 comparison and hint4 ,,man is made up of such a variety of matter1 that to search him thoroughly1 requires time and attention2 for1 though we are all made of the same materials1 and have all the same passions1 yet1 from a difference in their proportion and combination1 we vary in our dispositions2 what is agreeable to one is disagreeable to another1 and what one shall approve1 another shall condemn4 ,reason is given us to controul these passions1 but seldom does it4 ,application therefore to the reason of any man1 will frequently prove ineffectual1 unless we endeavour at the same time to gain his heart4 ,,wherever then you are1 search into the characters of men2 find out if possible1 their foible1 their governing passion1 or their particular merit2 take them on their weak side1 and you will generally succeed2 their prevailing vanity you may readily discover1 by observing their favourite topic of conversation2 for every one talks most1 of what he would be thought most to excel in4 ,,the time should also be judiciously made choice of4 ,every man has his particular times1 when he may be applied to with success1 the mollia tempora fandi2 but these times are not all day long1 they must be found out1 watched1 and taken advantage of4 ,you could not hope for success in applying to a man about one business1 when he was taken up with another1 or when his mind was affected with excess of grief1 anger1 or the like4 ,,you cannot judge of other men's minds better than by studying your own2 for though one man has one foible1 and another has another1 yet men1 in general1 are very much alike4 ,whatever pleases or offends you1 will1 in similar circumstances1 please or offend others2 if you find yourself hurt1 when another makes you feel his superiority1 you will certainly upon the common rule of right1 ,do as you would be done by1 take care not to let another feel your superiority1 if you have it2 especially if you wish to gain his interest or esteem4 ,if disagreeable insinuations1 open contradictions1 or oblique sneers1 vex and anger you1 would you use them where you wished to please8 ,certainly not4 ,observe then1 with care1 the operations of your own mind1 and you may1 in a great measure1 read all mankind4 ,i ,,will allow that one bred up in a cloister or college1 may reason well on the structure of the human mind2 he may investigate the nature of man1 and give a tolerable account of his head1 his heart1 his passions1 and his sentiments3 but at the same time he may know nothing of him2 he has not lived with him1 and of course knows but little how those sentiments or those passions will work4--,he must be ignorant of the various prejudices1 propensities and antipathies1 that always bias him1 and frequently determine him4 ,his knowledge is acquired only from theory1 which differs widely from practice2 and if he forms his judgment from that alone1 he must be often deceived2 whereas a man of the world1 one who collects his knowledge from his own experience and observation1 is seldom wrong2 he is well acquainted with the operations of the human mind2 prys into the heart of man2 reads his words1 before they are uttered2 sees his actions1 before they are performed2 knows what will please and what will displease1 and foresees the event of most things4 ,,labour then to acquire this intuitive knowledge2 attend carefully to the address1 the arts and manners of those acquainted with life1 and endeavour to imitate them4 ,observe the means they take1 to gain the favour1 and conciliate the affections of those they associate with2 pursue those means1 and you will soon gain the esteem of all that know you4 ,,how often have we seen men governed by persons very much their inferiors in point of understanding1 and even without their knowing it8 ,a proof that some men have more worldly dexterity than others2 they find out the weak and unguarded part1 make their attack there1 and the man surrenders4 ,,now from a knowledge of mankind we shall learn the advantage of two things1 the command of our temper and countenances2 a trifling1 disagreeable incident shall perhaps anger one unacquainted with life1 or confound him with shame2 shall make him rave like a madman1 or look like a fool2 but a man of the world will never understand what he cannot or ought not to resent4 ,if he should chance to make a slip himself1 he will stifle his confusion1 and turn it off with a jest1 recovering it with coolness4 ,,many people have sense enough to keep their own secrets2 but from being unused to a variety of company1 have unfortunately such a tell-tale countenance1 as involuntarily declares what they would wish to conceal4 ,this is a great unhappiness1 and should1 as soon as possible1 be got the better of4 ,,that coolness of mind1 and evenness of countenance1 which prevent a discovery of our sentiments1 by our words1 our actions1 or our looks1 are too necessary to pass unnoticed4 ,a man who cannot hear displeasing things1 without visible marks of anger or uneasiness2 or pleasing ones1 without a sudden burst of joy1 a cheerful eye1 or an expanded face1 is at the mercy of every knave2 for either they will designedly please or provoke you themselves1 to catch your unguarded looks2 or they will seize the opportunity thus to read your very heart1 when another shall do it4 ,you may possibly tell me1 that this coolness must be natural1 for if not1 you can never acquire it4 ,i will admit the force of constitution1 but people are very apt to blame that1 for many things they might readily avoid4 ,care1 with a little reflection1 will soon give you this mastery of your temper and countenance4 ,if you find yourself subject to sudden starts of passion1 determine with yourself not to utter a single word till your reason has recovered itself2 and resolve to keep your countenance as unmoved as possible4 ,as a man1 who at a card table can preserve a serenity in his looks1 under good or bad luck1 has considerably the advantage of one who appears elated with success1 or cast down with ill fortune1 from our being able to read his cards in his face1 so the man of the world1 having to deal with one of these babbling countenances1 will take care to profit by the circumstance1 let the consequence1 to him with whom he deals1 be as injurious as it may4 ,,in the course of life1 we shall find it necessary very often to put on a pleasing countenance1 when we are exceedingly displeased2 we must frequently seem friendly1 when we are quite otherwise4 ,i am sensible it is difficult to accost a man with smiles whom we know to be our enemy2 but what is to be done8 ,on receiving an affront1 if you cannot be justified in knocking the offender down1 you must not notice the offence2 for1 in the eye of the world1 taking an affront calmly is considered as cowardice4 ,,if fools should attempt at any time to be witty upon you1 the best way is not to know their witticisms are leveled at you1 and to conceal any uneasiness it may give you2 but1 should they be so plain that you cannot be thought ignorant of their meaning1 ,i would recommend1 rather than quarrel with the company1 joining even in the laugh against yourself2 allowing the jest to be a good one1 and take it in seeming good humour4 ,never attempt to retaliate the same way1 as that would imply you were hurt4 ,should what is said wound your honor1 or your moral character1 there is but one proper reply1 which ,i hope you will never be obliged to have recourse to4 ,,remember there are but two alternatives for a gentleman2 extreme politeness1 or the sword4 ,if a man openly and designedly affronts you1 call him out2 but1 if it does not amount to an open insult1 be outwardly civil2 if this does not make him ashamed of his behaviour1 it will prejudice every by-stander in your favour1 and instead of being disgraced1 you will come off with honor4 ,politeness to those we do not respect1 is no more a breach of faith1 than your humble servant at the bottom of a challenge2 they are universally understood to be things of course4 ,,wrangling and quarrelling characterize a weak mind2 leave them to those who love such conduct1 be you always above it4 ,enter into no sharp contest1 and pride yourself1 in shewing1 if possible1 more civility to your antagonist than to any other in the company2 this will infallibly bring over all the laughers to your side1 and the person you are contending with1 will be very likely to confess you have behaved very handsomely throughout the whole affair4 ,,experience will teach us1 that though all men consist principally of the same materials1 as ,i before took notice of1 yet from a difference in their proportion1 no two men are uniformly the same2 we differ from one another1 and we often differ from ourselves1 that is1 we sometimes do things utterly inconsistent with the general tenor of our characters4 ,the wisest man may occasionally do a weak thing2 the most honest man1 a wrong thing2 the proudest man1 a mean thing2 and the worst of men will sometimes do a good thing4 ,on this account1 our study of mankind should not be general2 we should take a frequent view of individuals1 and though we may upon the whole1 form a judgment of the man from his prevailing passion or his general character1 yet it will be prudent not to determine1 till we have waited to see the operations of his subordinate appetites and humours4 ,,for example2 a man's general character may be that of strictly honest4 ,i would not dispute it1 because1 ,i would not be thought envious or malevolent2 but ,i would not rely upon this general character1 so as to entrust him with my fortune or my life4 ,should this honest man1 as is not uncommon1 be my rival in power1 interest1 or love1 he may possibly do things that in other circumstances he would abhor2 and power1 interest1 and love1 let me tell you1 will often put honesty to the severest trial1 and frequently overpower it4 ,i would then ransack this honest man to the bottom1 if ,i wished to trust him1 and as ,i found him1 would place my confidence accordingly4 ,,one of the great compositions in our nature is vanity2 to which all men1 more or less1 give way4 ,women have an intolerable share of it4 ,no flattery1 no adulation1 is too gross for many of them2 those who flatter them most1 please them best2 and they are most in love with him who pretends to be most in love with them2 and the least slight or contempt of them is seldom forgotten4 ,it is1 in some measure1 the same with men2 they will sooner pardon an injury than an insult1 and are more hurt by contempt than by ill usage4 ,though all men do not boast of superior talents1 though they pretend not to the abilities of a ,pope1 a ,newton1 or a ,bolingbroke1 every one pretends to have common sense1 and to discharge his office in life with common decency2 to arraign1 therefore1 in any shape1 his abilities or integrity1 in the department he holds1 is an insult he will not readily forgive4 ,,as ,i would not have you trust too implicitly to a man1 because the world gives him a good character1 so ,i must particularly caution you against those who speak well of themselves4 ,in general1 suspect those who boast of or affect to have any one virtue above all others1 for they are commonly impostors4 ,there are exceptions however to this rule2 for we hear of prudes that have been chaste1 bullies that have been brave1 and saints that have been religious4 ,confide only where your own observation shall direct you2 observe not only what is said1 but how it is said1 and if you have any penetration1 you may find out the truth better by your eyes than your ears2 in short1 never take a character upon common report1 but enquire into it yourself2 for common report1 though it is right in general1 may be wrong in particulars4 ,,beware of those who1 on a slight acquaintance1 make you a tender of their friendship1 and seem to place a confidence in you2 it is ten to one but they deceive and betray you2 however1 do not rudely reject them upon such a supposition2 you may be civil to them1 though you do not entrust them4 ,silly men are apt to solicit your friendship1 and unbosom themselves upon the first acquaintance2 such friends cannot be worth having1 their friendship being as slender as their understanding2 and if they proffer their friendship with a design to make a property of you1 they are dangerous acquaintance indeed4 ,not but the little friendships of the weak may be of some use to you1 if you do not return the compliment2 and it may not be amiss to seem to accept of those designing men1 keeping them1 as it were1 in play1 that they may not be openly your enemies2 for their enmity is the next dangerous thing to their friendship4 ,we may certainly hold their vices in abhorrence1 without being marked out as their personal enemy4 ,the general rule is1 to have a real reserve with almost every one1 and a seeming reserve with almost no one2 for it is very disgusting to seem reserved1 and very dangerous not to be so4 ,few observe the true medium4 ,many are ridiculously mysterious upon trifles1 and many indiscreetly communicative of all they know4 ,,there is a kind of short-lived friendship that takes place among young men1 from a connexion in their pleasures only2 a friendship too often attended with bad consequences4 ,this companion of your pleasures1 young and unexperienced1 will probably1 in the heat of convivial mirth1 vow a perpetual friendship1 and unfold himself to you without the least reserve2 but new associations1 change of fortune1 or change of place1 may soon break this ill-timed connexion1 and an improper use may be made of it4 ,be one1 if you will1 in young companies1 and bear your part like others1 in all the social festivity of youth2 nay1 trust them with your innocent frolicks1 but keep your serious matters to yourself2 and if you must at any time make them known1 let it be to some tried friend of great experience2 and that nothing may tempt him to become your rival1 let that friend be in a different walk of life from yourself4 ,,were ,i to hear a man making strong protestations and swearing to the truth of a thing1 that is in itself probable and very likely to be1 ,i should doubt his veracity2 for when he takes such pains to make me believe it1 it cannot be with a good design4 ,,there is a certain easiness or false modesty in most young people1 that either makes them unwilling1 or ashamed to refuse any thing that is asked of them4 ,there is also an unguarded openness about them1 that makes them the ready prey of the artful and designing4 ,they are easily led away by the feigned friendships of a knave or a fool1 and too rashly place a confidence in them1 that terminates in their loss1 and frequently in their ruin4 ,beware1 therefore1 as ,i said before1 of these proffered friendships2 repay them with compliments1 but not with confidence4 ,never let your vanity make you suppose that people become your friends upon a slight acquaintance2 for good offices must be shewn on both sides to create a friendship3 ,it will not thrive1 unless its love be mutual2 and it requires time to ripen it4 ,,there is still among young people another kind of friendship merely nominal2 warm indeed for the time1 but fortunately of no long continuance4 ,this friendship takes its rise from their pursuing the same course of riot and debauchery2 their purses are open to each other1 they tell one another all they know1 they embark in the same quarrels1 and stand by each other on all occasions4 ,i should rather call this a confederacy against good morals and good manners1 and think it deserves the severest lash of the law2 but they have the impudence to call it friendship4 ,however1 it is often as suddenly dissolved as it is hastily contracted2 some accident disperses them1 and they presently forget each other1 except it is to betray1 and to laugh at their own egregious folly4 ,,in short1 the sum of the whole is1 to make a wide difference between companions and friends2 for a very agreeable companion has often proved a very dangerous friend4 ,,choice ,,of ,,company4 ,,the next thing to the choice of friends1 is the choice of your company4 ,,endeavour1 as much as you can1 to keep good company1 and the company of your superiors2 for you will be held in estimation according to the company you keep4 ,by superiors1 ,i do not mean so much with regard to birth1 as merit1 and the light in which they are considered by the world4 ,,there are two sorts of good company1 the one consists of persons of birth1 rank1 and fashion2 the other1 of those who are distinguished by some particular merit1 in any liberal art or science1 as men of letters1 c4 and a mixture of these is what ,i would have understood by good company3 ,for it is not what particular sets of people shall call themselves1 but what the people in general acknowledge to be so1 and are the accredited good company of the place4 ,,now and then1 persons without either birth1 rank1 or character1 will creep into good company1 under the protection of some considerable personage2 but1 in general1 none are admitted of mean degree1 or infamous moral character4 ,,in this fashionable good company alone1 can you learn the best manners and the best language2 for1 as there is no legal standard to form them by1 it is here they are established4 ,,it may possibly be questioned1 whether a man has it always in his power to get into good company2 undoubtedly1 by deserving it1 he has1 provided he is in circumstances which enable him to live and appear in the stile of a gentleman4 ,knowledge1 modesty1 and good-breeding1 will endear him to all that see him2 for without politeness1 the scholar is no better than a pedant1 the philosopher than a cynic1 the soldier than a brute1 nor any man than a clown4 ,,though the company of men of learning and genius is highly to be valued and occasionally coveted1 ,i would by no means have you always found in such company4 ,as they do not live in the world1 they cannot have that easy manner and address1 which ,i would wish you to acquire4 ,if you can bear a part in such company1 it is certainly advisable to be in it sometimes1 and you will be the more esteemed in other company by being so2 but let it not engross you1 lest you should be considered as one of the literati1 which however respectable in name1 is not the way to rise or shine in the fashionable world4 ,,but the company which1 of all others1 you should carefully avoid1 is that1 which1 in every sense of the word may be called low2 low in birth1 low in rank1 low in parts1 and low in manners2 that company1 who1 insignificant and contemptible in themselves1 think it an honor to be seen with you1 and who will flatter your follies1 nay your very vices1 to keep you with them4 ,,though you may think such a caution unnecessary1 ,i do not2 for many a young gentleman of sense and rank1 has been led by his vanity to keep such company1 till he has been degraded1 vilified and undone4 ,,the vanity ,i mean1 is that of being the first of the company4 ,this pride1 though too common1 is idle to the last degree4 ,nothing in the world lets a man down so much4 ,for the sake of dictating1 being applauded and admired by this low company1 he is disgraced and disqualified for better4 ,depend upon it1 in the estimation of mankind1 you will sink or rise to the level of the company you keep4 ,,be it1 then1 your ambition to get into the best company2 and1 when there1 imitate their virtues1 but not their vices4 ,you have1 no doubt1 often heard of genteel and fashionable vices4 ,these are whoring1 drinking and gaming4 ,it has happened that some men1 even with these vices1 have been admired and esteemed4 ,understand this matter rightly1 it is not their vices for which they are admired2 but for some accomplishments they at the same time possess2 for their parts1 their learning1 or their good-breeding4 ,be assured1 were they free from their vices1 they would be much more esteemed4 ,in these mixed characters1 the bad part is overlooked for the sake of the good4 ,,should you be unfortunate enough to have any vices of your own1 add not to their number1 by adopting the vices of others4 ,vices of adoption are of all others the most unpardonable2 for they have not inadvertency to plead4 ,if people had no vices but their own1 few would have so many as they have4 ,,imitate1 then1 only the perfections you meet with2 copy the politeness1 the address1 the easy manners of well-bred people2 and remember1 let them shine ever so bright1 if they have any vices1 they are so many blemishes1 which it would be as ridiculous to imitate1 as it would1 to make an artificial wart upon one's face1 because some very handsome man had the misfortune to have a natural one upon his4 ,,laughter4 ,,let us now descend to minute matters1 which1 though not so important as those we mentioned1 are still far from inconsiderable4 ,of these laughter is one4 ,,frequent and loud laughter is a sure sign of a weak mind1 and no less characteristic of a low education4 ,it is the manner in which low-bred men express their silly joy1 at silly things1 and they call it being merry4 ,i ,,do not recommend upon all occasions a solemn countenance4 ,a man may smile1 but if he would be thought a gentleman and a man of sense1 he would by no means laugh4 ,true wit never made a man of fashion laugh2 he is above it4 ,it may create a smile1 but as loud laughter shews1 that a man has not the command of himself1 every one1 who would wish to appear sensible1 must abhor it4 ,a ,,man',s going to sit down1 on a supposition that he has a chair behind him1 and falling for want of one1 occasions a general laugh1 when the best pieces of wit would not do it2 a sufficient proof how low and unbecoming laughter is4 ,,besides1 could the immoderate laugher hear his own noise1 or see the faces he makes1 he would despise himself for his folly4 ,laughter being generally supposed to be the effects of gaiety1 its absurdity is not properly attended to2 but a little reflection will easily restrain it2 and when you are told1 it is a mark of low-breeding1 ,i persuade myself you will endeavour to avoid it4 ,,some people have a silly trick of laughing1 whenever they speak2 so that they are always on the grin1 and their faces ever distorted4 ,this and a thousand other tricks1 such as scratching their heads1 twirling their hats1 fumbling with their button1 playing with their fingers1 c4 c4 are acquired from a false modesty1 at their first outset in life4 ,being shame-faced in company1 they try a variety of ways to keep themselves in countenance2 thus1 they fall into those awkward habits ,i have mentioned1 which grow upon them1 and in time become habitual4 ,,nothing is more repugnant likewise to good-breeding than horse play of any sort1 romping1 throwing things at one another's heads1 and so on4 ,they may pass well enough with the mob1 but they lessen and degrade the gentleman4 ,,sundry ,,little ,,accomplishments4 ,i ,,have had reason to observe before1 that various little matters1 apparently trifling in themselves1 conspire to form the whole of pleasing1 as1 in a well finished portrait1 a variety of colours combine to compleat the piece4 ,it not being necessary to dwell much upon them1 ,i shall content myself1 with just mentioning them as they occur4 #a4 ,,to do the honors of a table gracefully1 is one of the outlines of a well-bred man2 and to carve well1 is an article1 little as it may seem1 that is useful twice every day1 and the doing of which ill1 is not only troublesome to one's self1 but renders us disagreeable and ridiculous to others4 ,we are always in pain for a man1 who instead of cutting up a fowl genteely1 is hacking for half an hour across the bone1 greasing himself1 and bespattering the company with the sauce4 ,use1 with a little attention1 is all that is requisite to acquit yourself well in this particular4 #b4 ,,to be well received1 you must1 also1 pay some attention to your behaviour at table1 where it is exceedingly rude to scratch any part of your body1 to spit1 or blow your nose1 if you can possibly avoid it1 to eat greedily1 to lean your elbows on the table1 to pick your teeth before the dishes are removed1 or to leave the table before grace is said4 #c4 ,,drinking of healths is now growing out of fashion1 and is very unpolite in good company4 ,custom had once made it universal1 but the improved manners of the age now render it vulgar4 ,what can be more rude or ridiculous than to interrupt persons at their meals1 with an unnecessary compliment8 ,abstain then from this silly custom1 where you find it out of use2 and use it only at those tables where it continues general4 #d4 8,a ,,polite0 manner of refusing to comply with the solicitations of a company1 is also very necessary to be learnt2 for1 a young man1 who seems to have no will of his own1 but does every thing that is asked of him1 may be a very good natured fellow1 but he is a very silly one4 ,if you are invited to drink at any man's house1 more than you think is wholesome1 you may say1 #8you wish you could1 but that so little makes you both drunk and sick1 that you should only be bad company by doing it2 of course beg to be excused4' ,if desired to play at cards deeper than you would1 refuse it ludicrously2 tell them1 #8if you were sure to lose1 you might possibly sit down2 but that1 as fortune may be favourable1 you dread the thought of having too much money1 ever since you found what an incumbrance it was to poor ,harlequin1 and therefore you are resolved never to put yourself in the way of winning more than such or such a sum a day4' ,this light way of declining invitations1 to vice and folly1 is more becoming a young man than philosophical or sententious refusals1 which would only be laughed at4 #e4 ,,now ,i am on the subject of cards1 ,i must not omit mentioning the necessity of playing them well and genteely1 if you would be thought to have kept good company4 ,i would by no means recommend playing of cards as a part of your study1 lest you should grow too fond of it1 and the consequences prove bad4 ,it were better not to know a diamond from a club1 than to become a gambler2 but as custom has introduced innocent card-playing at most friendly meetings1 it marks the gentleman to handle them genteely1 and play them well2 and as ,i hope you will play only for small sums1 should you lose your money1 pray lose it with temper2 or win1 receive your winnings without either elation or greediness4 #f4 ,,to write well and correct1 and in a pleasing stile1 is another part of polite education4 ,every man who has the use of his eyes and his right hand1 can write whatever hand he pleases4 ,nothing is so illiberal as a school-boy's scrawl4 ,i would not have you learn a stiff formal hand-writing1 like that of a schoolmaster1 but a genteel1 legible and liberal hand1 and to be able to write quick4 ,as to the correctness and elegancy of your writing1 attention to grammar does the one1 and to the best authors1 the other4 ,epistolary correspondence should not be carried on in a studied or affected style1 but the language should flow from the pen1 as naturally and as easily as it would from the mouth4 ,in short1 a letter should be penned in the same style1 as you would talk to your friend1 if he were present4 #g4 ,,if writing well shews the gentleman1 much more so does spelling well4 ,it is essentially necessary for a gentleman1 or a man of letters2 one false spelling may fix a ridicule on him for the remainder of his life4 ,words in books are generally well spelled1 according to the orthography of the age2 reading therefore1 with attention1 will teach every one to spell right4 ,it sometimes happens that words are spelled differently by different authors2 but if you spell them upon the authority of one1 in estimation of the public1 you will escape ridicule4 ,where there is but one way of spelling a word1 by your spelling it wrong1 you will be sure to be laughed at4 ,for a woman of a tolerable education would laugh at and despise her lover1 if he wrote to her1 and the words were ill spelled4 ,be particularly attentive then to your spelling4 #h4 ,,there is nothing that a young man1 at his first appearance in life1 ought more to dread1 than having any ridicule fixed on him4 ,in the estimation even of the most rational men1 it will lessen him1 but ruin him with all the rest4 ,many have been undone by a ridiculous nick-name4 ,the causes of nick-names among well-bred men1 are generally the little defects in manner1 air1 or address4 ,to have the appellation of ill-bred1 awkward1 muttering1 left-legged1 or any other1 tacked always to your name1 would injure you more than you are aware of4 ,avoid then these little defects 7and they are easily avoided7 and you need never fear a nick-name4 #i4 ,,some young men are apt to think1 that they cannot be complete gentlemen1 without becoming men of pleasure2 and the rake they often mistake for the man of pleasure4 ,a rake is made up of the meanest and most disgraceful vices4 ,they all combine to degrade his character1 and ruin his health and fortune4 ,a man of pleasure will refine upon the enjoyments of the age1 attend them with decency1 and partake of them becomingly4 ,indeed1 he is too often less scrupulous than he should be1 and frequently has cause to repent it4 ,a man of pleasure1 at best1 is but a dissipated being1 and what the rational part of mankind must abhor2 ,i mention it1 however1 lest in taking up the man of pleasure1 you should fall into the rake2 for of two evils1 always chuse the least4 ,a dissolute1 flagitious footman may make as good a rake as a man of the first quality4 ,few men can be men of pleasure2 every man may be a rake4 ,there is a certain dignity that should be preserved in all our pleasures3 ,in love1 a man may lose his heart1 without losing his nose2 at table1 a man may have a distinguishing palate1 without being a glutton2 he may love wine1 without being a drunkard2 he may game1 without being a gambler2 and so on4 ,every virtue has its kindred vice1 and every pleasure its neighbouring disgrace4 ,temperance and moderation mark the gentleman2 but excess the blackguard4 ,attend carefully1 then1 to the line that divides them2 and remember1 stop rather a yard short1 than step an inch beyond it4 ,weigh the present enjoyment of your pleasures against the necessary consequences of them1 and ,i will leave you to your own determination4 #aj4 ,a ,,gentleman has ever some regard also to the choice of his amusements2 if at cards1 he will not be seen at cribbage1 all-fours1 or put2 or1 in sports of exercise1 at skittles1 foot-ball1 leap-frog1 cricket1 driving of coaches1 c4 but will preserve a propriety in every part of his conduct2 knowing that any imitation of the manners of the mob1 will unavoidably stamp him with vulgarity4 ,there is another amusement too1 which ,i cannot help calling illiberal1 that is1 playing upon any musical instrument4 ,music is commonly reckoned one of the liberal arts1 and undoubtedly is so2 but to be piping or fiddling at a concert is degrading to a man of fashion4 ,if you love music1 hear it2 pay fiddlers to play to you1 but never fiddle yourself4 ,it makes a gentleman appear frivolous and contemptible1 leads him frequently into bad company1 and wastes that time which might otherwise be well employed4 #aa4 ,,secrecy is another characteristic of good-breeding4 ,be careful never to tell in one company what you see or hear in another2 much less to divert the present company at the expense of the last4 ,things apparently indifferent may1 when often repeated and told abroad1 have much more serious consequences than imagined4 ,in conversation1 there is generally a tacit reliance1 that what is said will not be repeated2 and a man1 though not enjoined to secrecy1 will be excluded company1 if found to be a tatler2 besides1 he will draw himself into a thousand scrapes1 and every one will be afraid to speak before him4 #ab4 ,,pulling out your watch in company unasked1 either at home or abroad1 is a mark of ill-breeding2 if at home1 it appears as if you were tired of your company1 and wished them to be gone2 if abroad1 as if the hours dragged heavily1 and wished to be gone yourself4 ,if you want to know the time1 withdraw2 besides1 as the taking what is called ,french leave was introduced1 that on one person's leaving the company the rest might not be disturbed1 looking at your watch does what that piece of politeness was designed to prevent2 it is a kind of dictating to all present1 and telling them it is time1 or almost time to break up4 #ac4 ,,among other things1 let me caution you against ever being in a hurry2 a man of sense may be in haste1 but he is never in a hurry2 convinced that hurry is the surest way to make him do what he undertakes ill4 ,to be in a hurry is a proof that the business we embark in is too great for us2 of course it is the mark of little minds1 that are puzzled and perplexed1 when they should be cool and deliberate2 they want to do every thing at once1 and therefore do nothing4 ,be steady1 then1 in all your engagements2 look round you1 before you begin2 and remember that you had better do half of them well1 and leave the rest undone1 than to do the whole indifferently4 #ad4 ,,from a kind of false modesty1 most young men are apt to consider familiarity as unbecoming4 ,forwardness ,i allow is so2 but there is a decent familiarity that is necessary in the course of life4 ,mere formal visits1 upon formal invitations1 are not the thing2 they create no connexion1 nor will they prove of service to you2 it is the careless and easy ingress and egress1 at all hours1 that secures an acquaintance to our interest2 and this is acquired by a respectful familiarity entered into1 without forfeiting your consequence4 #ae4 ,,in acquiring new acquaintance1 be careful not to neglect your old1 for a slight of this kind is seldom forgiven4 ,if you cannot be with your former acquaintance1 so often as you used to be1 while you had no others1 take care not to give them cause to think you neglect them2 call upon them frequently1 though you cannot stay long with them2 tell them you are sorry to leave them so soon1 and nothing should take you away but certain engagements which good manners oblige you to attend to2 for it will be your interest to make all the friends you can1 and as few enemies as possible4 ,by friends1 ,i would not be understood to mean confidential ones2 but persons who speak of you respectfully1 and who1 consistent with their own interest1 would wish to be of service to you1 and would rather do you good than harm4 #af4 ,,another thing ,i must recommend to you1 as characteristic of a polite education1 and of having kept good company1 is a graceful manner of conferring favours4 ,the most obliging things may be done so awkwardly as to offend1 while the most disagreeable things may be done so agreeably as to please4 #ag4 ,a ,,few more articles and then ,i have done2 the first is on the subject of vanity4 ,it is the common failing of youth1 and as such ought to be carefully guarded against4 ,the vanity ,i mean1 is that which1 if given way to1 stamps a man a coxcomb1 a character he will find a difficulty to get rid of1 perhaps as long as he lives4 ,now this vanity shews itself in a variety of shapes2 one man shall pride himself in taking the lead in all conversations1 and peremptorily deciding upon every subject2 another1 desirous of appearing successful among the women1 shall insinuate the encouragement he has met with1 the conquests he makes1 and perhaps boasts of favours he never received2 if he speaks truth1 he is ungenerous2 if false1 he is a villain2 but whether true or false1 he defeats his own purposes1 overthrows the reputation he wishes to erect1 and draws upon himself contempt in the room of respect4 ,some men are vain enough to think they acquire consequence by alliance1 or by an acquaintance with persons of distinguished character or abilities2 hence they are eternally talking of their grand-father1 ,lord such-a-one2 their kinsman1 ,sir ,william such-a-one2 or their intimate friend1 ,dr4 such-a-one1 with whom perhaps1 they are scarcely acquainted4 ,if they are ever found out 7and that they are sure to be one time or another7 they become ridiculous and contemptible2 but even admitting what they say to be true1 what then8 ,a man's intrinsic merit does not rise from an ennobled alliance1 or a reputable acquaintance4 ,a rich man never borrows4 ,when angling for praise1 modesty is the surest bait4 ,if we would wish to shine in any particular character1 we must never affect that character4 ,an affectation of courage will make a man pass for a bully2 an affectation of wit1 for a coxcomb2 and an affectation of sense1 for a fool4 ,not that ,i would recommend bashfulness or timidity3 ,no2 ,i would have every one know his own value1 yet not discover that he knows it1 but leave his merit to be found out by others4 #ah4 ,,another thing worth your attention is1 if in company with an inferior1 not to let him feel his inferiority2 if he discovers it himself1 without your endeavours1 the fault is not yours1 and he will not blame you2 but if you take pains to mortify him1 or to make him feel himself inferior to you in abilities1 fortune1 or rank1 it is an insult that will not readily be forgiven4 ,in point of abilities1 it would be unjust1 as they are out of his power2 in point of rank or fortune1 it is ill-natured and ill-bred4 ,this rule is never more necessary than at table1 where there cannot be a greater insult than to help an inferior to a part he dislikes1 or a part that may be worse than ordinary1 and to take the best to yourself4 ,if you at any time invite an inferior to your table1 you put him1 during the time he is there1 upon an equality with you2 and it is an act of the highest rudeness to treat him in any respect1 slightingly4 ,i would rather double my attention to such a person1 and treat him with additional respect1 lest he should even suppose himself neglected4 ,there cannot be a greater savageness1 or cruelty1 or any thing more degrading to a man of fashion than to put upon or take unbecoming liberties with him1 whose modesty1 humility1 or respect1 will not suffer him to retaliate4 ,true politeness consists in making every body happy about you2 and as to mortify is to render unhappy1 it can be nothing but the worst of breeding4 ,make it a rule1 rather to flatter a person's vanity than otherwise2 make him1 if possible1 more in love with himself1 and you will be certain to gain his esteem2 never tell him any thing he may not like to hear1 nor say things that will put him out of countenance1 but let it be your study on all occasions to please2 this will be making friends instead of enemies1 and be a mean of serving yourself in the end4 #ai4 ,,never be witty1 at the expense of any one present1 nor gratify that idle inclination which is too strong in most young men1 ,i mean laughing at1 or ridiculing the weaknesses or infirmities of others1 by way of diverting the company1 or displaying your own superiority4 ,most people have their weaknesses1 their peculiar likings and aversions4 ,some cannot bear the sight of a cat2 others the smell of cheese1 and so on2 were you to laugh at these men for their antipathies1 or by design or inattention to bring them in their way1 you could not insult them more4 ,you may possibly thus gain the laugh on your side1 for the present1 but it will make the person1 perhaps1 at whose expense you are merry1 your enemy forever after2 and even those who laugh with you1 will on a little reflection1 fear you and probably despise you2 whereas1 to procure what one likes1 and to remove what the other hates1 would shew them that they were the objects of your attention1 and possibly make them more your friends than much greater services would have done4 ,if you have wit1 use it to please but not to hurt4 ,you may shine1 but take care not to scorch4 ,in short1 never seem to see the faults of others4 ,though among the mass of men there are1 doubtless1 numbers of fools and knaves1 yet were we to tell every one we meet with1 that we know them to be so1 we should be in perpetual war4 ,i would detest the knave and pity the fool1 wherever ,i found him1 but ,i would let neither of them know unnecessarily that ,i did so2 as ,i would not be industrious to make myself enemies4 ,as one must please others then1 in order to be pleased one's self1 consider what is agreeable to you1 must be agreeable to them1 and conduct yourself accordingly4 #bj4 ,,whispering in company is another act of ill-breeding3 ,it seems to insinuate either that the persons who we would not wish should hear1 are unworthy of our confidence1 or it may lead them to suppose we are speaking improperly of them2 on both accounts1 therefore1 abstain from it4 #ba4 ,,so pulling out one letter after another and reading them in company1 or cutting and paring one's nails1 is unpolite and rude4 ,it seems to say1 we are weary of the conversation1 and are in want of some amusement to pass away the time4 #bb4 ,,humming a tune to ourselves1 drumming with our fingers on the table1 making a noise with our feet1 and such like1 are all breaches of good manners1 and indications of our contempt for the persons present2 therefore they should not be indulged4 #bc4 ,,walking fast in the streets is a mark of vulgarity1 implying hurry of business2 it may appear well in a mechanic or tradesman1 but suits ill with the character of a gentleman1 or a man of fashion4 #bd4 ,,staring at any person you meet full in the face1 is an act also of ill-breeding2 it looks as if you saw something wonderful in his appearance1 and is therefore a tacit reprehension4 #be4 ,,eating quick1 or very slow at meals1 is characteristic of the vulgar2 the first infers poverty1 that you have not had a good meal for some time2 the last1 if abroad1 that you dislike your entertainment2 if at home1 that you are rude enough to set before your friends what you cannot eat yourself4 ,so again1 eating your soup with your nose in the plate is vulgar2 it has the appearance of being used to hard work1 and of course an unsteady hand4 ,if it be necessary then to avoid this1 it is much more so that of smelling your meat4 #bf4 ,,smelling to the meat while on the fork1 before you put it in your mouth4 ,i have seen many an ill-bred fellow do this1 and have been so angry1 that ,i could have kicked him from the table4 ,if you dislike what you have upon your plate1 leave it2 but on no account1 by smelling to1 or examining it1 charge your friend with putting unwholesome provisions before you4 #bg4 ,,spitting on the carpet is a nasty practice1 and shocking1 in a man of liberal education4 ,were this to become general1 it would be as necessary to change the carpets as the table-cloths2 besides1 it will lead our acquaintance to suppose1 that we have not been used to genteel furniture2 for this reason alone1 if for no other1 by all means avoid it4 #bh4 ,,keep yourself free likewise from odd tricks or habits1 such as thrusting out your tongue continually1 snapping your fingers1 rubbing your hands1 sighing aloud1 an affected shivering of your whole body1 gaping with a noise like a country-fellow that has been sleeping in a hay-loft1 or indeed with any noise1 and many others1 which ,i have noticed before2 these are imitations of the manners of the mob1 and are degrading to a gentleman4 ,a ,,very little attention will get the better of all these ill-bred habits1 and be assured1 you will find your account in it4 ,,employment ,,of ,,time4 ,,employment of time1 is a subject1 that from its importance1 deserves your best attention4 ,most young gentlemen have a great deal of time before them1 and one hour well employed1 in the early part of life1 is more valuable and will be of greater use to you1 than perhaps four and twenty1 some years to come4 ,,whatever time you can steal from company1 and from the study of the world2 7,i say company1 for a knowledge of life is best learned in various companies7 employ it in serious reading4 ,take up some valuable book1 and continue the reading of that book1 till you have got through it2 never burden your mind with more than one thing at a time3 ,and in reading this book don't run over it superficially1 but read every passage twice over1 at least do not pass on to a second till you thoroughly understand the first1 nor quit the book till you are master of the subject2 for unless you do this1 you may read it through1 and not remember the contents of it for a week4 ,the books ,i would particularly recommend1 among others1 are1 ,cardinal ,retz's ,maxims1 ,rochfaucault's ,moral ,reflections1 ,bruyere's ,characters1 ,fontenell's ,plurality of ,worlds1 ,sir ,josiah ,child on ,trade1 ,bolingbroke's ,works2 for style1 his ,remarks on the ,history of ,england1 under the name of ,sir ,john ,oldcastle2 ,puffendorf's ,jus ,gentium1 and ,grotius' de ,jure ,belli et ,pacis3 ,the last two are well translated by ,barboyrac4 ,for occasional half-hours or less1 read the best works of invention1 wit and humour2 but never waste your minutes on trifling authors1 either ancient or modern4 ,,any business you may have to transact1 should be done the first opportunity1 and finished1 if possible without interruption2 for by deferring it1 we may probably finish it too late1 or execute it indifferently4 ,now1 business of any kind should never be done by halves1 but every part of it should be well attended to3 ,for he that does business ill1 had better not do it at all4 ,and1 in any point1 which discretion bids you pursue1 and which has a manifest utility to recommend it1 let no difficulties deter you2 rather let them animate your industry4 ,if one method fails1 try a second and a third4 ,be active1 persevere and you will certainly conquer4 ,,never indulge a lazy disposition2 there are few things but are attended with some difficulties1 and if you are frightened at those difficulties1 you will not compleat any thing4 ,indolent minds prefer ignorance to trouble2 they look upon most things as impossible1 because perhaps they are difficult4 ,even an hour's attention is too laborious for them1 and they would rather content themselves with the first view of things1 than take the trouble to look any farther into them4 ,thus1 when they come to talk upon subjects to those who have studied them1 they betray an unpardonable ignorance1 and lay themselves open to answers that confuse them4 ,be careful then1 that you do not get the appellation of indolent2 and1 if possible1 avoid the character of frivolous4 ,for1 ,,the frivolous mind is always busied upon nothing4 ,it mistakes trifling objects for important ones1 and spends that time upon little matters1 that should only be bestowed upon great ones4 ,knick-knacks1 butterflies1 shells1 and such like1 engross the attention of the frivolous man1 and fill up all his time4 ,he studies the dress and not the characters of men1 and his subjects of conversation are no other than the weather1 his own domestic affairs1 his servants1 his method of managing his family1 the little anecdotes of the neighbourhood1 and the fiddle-faddle stories of the day2 void of information1 void of improvement4 ,these he relates with emphasis1 as interesting matters2 in short1 he is a male gossip1 ,i appeal to your own feelings now1 whether such things do not lessen a man1 in the opinion of his acquaintance1 and instead of attracting esteem1 create disgust4 ,,dignity ,,of ,,manners4 ,,there is a certain dignity of manners1 without which the very best characters will not be valued4 ,,romping1 loud and frequent laughing1 punning1 joking1 mimickry1 waggery1 and too great and indiscriminate familiarity1 will render any one contemptible1 in spite of all his knowledge or his merit4 ,these may constitute a merry fellow1 but a merry fellow was never yet respectable4 ,indiscriminate familiarity1 will either offend your superiors1 or make you pass for their dependant1 or toad-eater1 and it will put your inferiors on a degree of equality with you1 that may be troublesome4 ,a ,,joke1 if it carries a sting along with it1 is no longer a joke but an affront2 and even if it has no sting1 unless its witticism is delicate and facetious1 instead of giving pleasure1 it will disgust2 or1 if the company should laugh1 they will probably laugh at the jester rather than the jest4 ,,punning is a mere playing upon words1 and far from being a mark of sense3 ,thus1 were we to say1 such a dress is commodious1 one of these wags would answer odious2 or1 that1 whatever it has been1 it is now be commodious4 ,others will give us an answer different from what we should expect1 without either wit1 or the least beauty of thought2 as1 #8,where's my ,lord8'--#8,in his clothes1 unless he is in bed4'--#8,how does this wine taste8'--#8,a little moist1 ,i think4'--#8,how is this to be eaten8'--#8,with your mouth2' and so on1 all which 7you will readily apprehend7 are low and vulgar4 ,if your witticisms are not instantly approved by the laugh of the company1 for heaven's sake1 don't attempt to be witty for the future2 for you may take it for granted1 the defect is in yourself1 and not in your hearers4 ,,as to a mimick or a wag1 he is little else than a buffoon1 who will distort his mouth and his eyes to make people laugh4 ,be assured1 no one person ever demeaned himself to please the rest1 unless he wished to be thought the ,merry-,andrew of the company1 and whether this character is respectable1 ,i will leave you to judge4 ,,if a man's company is coveted on any other account than his knowledge1 his good sense1 or his manners1 he is seldom respected by those who invite him1 but made use of only to entertain4 #8,let's have such-a-one1 for he sings a good song1 or he is always joking or laughing2' or #8,let's send for such-a-one1 for he is a good bottle companion2' these are degrading distinctions1 that preclude all respect and esteem4 ,whoever is had 7as the phrase is7 for the sake of any qualification singly1 is merely that thing he is had for1 is never considered in any other light1 and1 of course1 never properly respected1 let his intrinsic merits be what they will4 ,,you may possibly suppose this dignity of manners to border upon pride2 but it differs as much from pride1 as true courage from blustering4 ,,to flatter a person right or wrong1 is abject flattery1 and to consent readily to do every thing proposed by a company1 be it silly or criminal1 is full as degrading1 as to dispute warmly upon every subject1 and to contradict upon all occasions4 ,to preserve dignity1 we should modestly assert our own sentiments1 though we politely acquiesce in those of others4 ,,so again1 to support dignity of character1 we should neither be frivolously curious about trifles1 nor be laboriously intent upon little objects that deserve not a moment's attention2 for this implies an incapacity in matters of greater importance4 ,a ,,great deal likewise depends upon our air1 address and expressions2 an awkward address and vulgar expressions infer either a low turn of mind1 or low education4 ,,insolent contempt1 or low envy1 is incompatible also with dignity of manners4 ,low-bred persons1 fortunately lifted in the world in fine clothes and fine equipages1 will insolently look down on all those who cannot afford to make as good an appearance1 and they openly envy those who perhaps make a better4 ,they also dread the being slighted2 of course1 are suspicious and captious2 are uneasy themselves1 and make every body else so about them4 ,a ,,certain degree of outward seriousness in looks and actions gives dignity1 while a constant smirk upon the face 7that insipid silly smile1 which fools have when they would be civil7 and whiffling motions1 are strong marks of futility4 ,,but above all a dignity of character is to be acquired best by a certain firmness in all our actions4 ,a mean1 timid and passive complaisance1 lets a man down more than he is aware of2 but still his firmness and resolution should not extend to brutality1 but be accompanied with a peculiar and engaging softness1 or mildness4 ,,if you discover any hastiness in your temper1 and find it apt to break out into rough and unguarded expressions1 watch it narrowly1 and endeavour to curb it2 but let no complaisance1 no weak desire of pleasing1 no wheedling1 urge you to do that which discretion forbids2 but persist and persevere in all that is right4 ,in your connexions and friendships1 you will find this rule of use to you4 ,invite and preserve attachments by your firmness2 but labour to keep clear of enemies by a mildness of behaviour4 ,disarm those enemies you may unfortunately have 7and few are without them7 by a gentleness of manner1 but make them feel the steadiness of your just resentment6 ,for there is a wide difference between bearing malice and a determined self-defence2 the one is imperious1 but the other is prudent and justifiable4 ,,in directing your servants1 or any person you have a right to command2 if you deliver your orders mildly1 and in that engaging manner which every gentleman should study to do1 you would be cheerfully1 and consequently1 well obeyed2 but if tyrannically1 you would be very unwillingly served1 if served at all4 ,a cool1 steady determination should shew that you will be obeyed1 but a gentleness in the manner of enforcing that obedience should make your service a cheerful one4 ,thus will you be loved without being despised1 and feared without being hated4 ,i ,,hope ,i need not mention vices4 ,a man who has patiently been kicked out of company1 may have as good a pretence to courage1 as one rendered infamous by his vices1 may to dignity of any kind2 however1 of such consequence are appearances1 that an outward decency and an affected dignity of manners will even keep such a man the longer from sinking4 ,if therefore you should unfortunately have no intrinsic merit of your own1 keep up1 if possible1 the appearance of it2 and the world will possibly give you credit for the rest4 ,a versatility of manners is as necessary in social life1 as a versatility of parts in political4 ,this is no way blamable1 if not used with an ill design4 ,we must1 like the cameleon1 often put on the hue of persons we wish to be well with2 and it surely can never be blamable1 to endeavour to gain the good will or affection of any one1 if when obtained1 we do not mean to abuse it4 ,,rules ,,for ,,conversation4 ,,having now given you full and sufficient instructions for making you well received in the best companies2 nothing remains but that ,i lay before you some few rules for your conduct in such company4 ,many things on this subject ,i have mentioned before1 but some few matters remain to be mentioned now4 #a4 ,,talk1 then1 frequently but not long together1 lest you tire the persons you are speaking to2 for few persons talk so well upon a subject1 as to keep up the attention of their hearers for any length of time4 #b4 ,,avoid telling stories in company1 unless they are very short indeed1 and very applicable to the subject you are upon2 in this case relate them in as few words as possible1 without the least digression1 and with some apology2 as that you hate the telling of stories1 but the shortness of it induced you4 ,and1 if your story has any wit in it1 be particularly careful not to laugh at it yourself4 ,nothing is more tiresome and disagreeable than a long tedious narrative2 it betrays a gossiping disposition1 and great want of imagination2 and nothing is more ridiculous than to express an approbation of your own story1 by a laugh4 #c4 ,,in relating any thing1 keep clear of repetitions1 or very hackneyed expressions1 such as1 says he1 or says she4 ,some people will use these so often1 as to take off the hearer's attention from the story2 as1 in an organ out of tune1 one pipe shall perhaps sound the whole time we are playing1 and confuse the piece1 so as not to be understood4 #d4 ,,digressions1 likewise1 should be guarded against4 ,a story is always more agreeable without them4 ,of this kind are1 #8the gentleman ,i am telling you of1 is the son of ,sir ,thomas1--who lives in ,harley street2 you must know him--his brother had a horse that won the sweep stakes at the last ,newmarket meeting--,zounds6 if you don't know him you know nothing4' ,or1 #8,he was an upright tall old gentleman1 who wore his own long hair3 don't you recollect him8' ,all this is unnecessary2 is very tiresome and provoking1 and would be an excuse for a man's behaviour1 if he was to leave us in the midst of our narrative4 #e4 ,,some people have a trick of holding the persons they are speaking to by the button1 or the hand1 in order to be heard out2 conscious1 ,i suppose1 that their tale is tiresome4 ,pray1 never do this2 if the person you speak to is not as willing to hear your story1 as you are to tell it1 you had much better break off in the middle2 for if you tire them once1 they will be afraid to listen to you a second time4 #f4 ,,others have a way of punching the person they are talking to1 in the side1 and at the end of every sentence1 asking him some such questions as the following3 #8,wasn't ,i right in that8'--#8,you know1 ,i told you so8'--#8,what's your opinion8' and the like2 or perhaps they will be thrusting him1 or jogging him with their elbow4 ,for mercy's sake1 never give way to this2 it will make your company dreaded4 #g4 ,,long talkers are frequently apt to single out some unfortunate man present1 generally the most silent one of the company1 or probably him who sits next to him4 ,to this man1 in a kind of half-whisper they will run on for half an hour together4 ,nothing can be more ill-bred4 ,but if one of these unmerciful talkers should attack you1 if you wish to oblige him1 ,i would recommend the hearing him with patience3 ,seem to do so at least1 for you could not hurt him more than to leave him in the middle of his story1 or discover any impatience in the course of it4 #h4 ,,incessant talkers are very disagreeable companions4 ,nothing can be more rude than to engross the conversation to yourself1 or to take the words as it were1 out of another man's mouth4 ,every man in company has an equal claim to bear his part in the conversation1 and to deprive him of it1 is not only unjust1 but a tacit declaration that he cannot speak so well upon the subject as yourself2 you will therefore take it up3 ,and1 what can be more rude8 ,i would as soon forgive a man that should stop my mouth when ,i was gaping1 as take my words from me while ,i was speaking them4 ,now1 if this be unpardonable1 it cannot be less so #i4 ,,to help out or forestal the slow speaker1 as if you alone were rich in expressions1 and he were poor4 ,you may take it for granted1 every one is vain enough to think he can talk well1 though he may modestly deny it2 helping a person therefore out in his expressions1 is a correction that will stamp the corrector with impudence and ill manners4 #aj4 ,,those who contradict others upon all occasions1 and make every assertion a matter of dispute1 betray by this behaviour an unacquaintance with good-breeding4 ,he therefore who wishes to appear amiable1 with those he converses with1 will be cautious of such expressions as these1 #8,that can't be true1 ,sir4' #8,the affair is as ,i say4' #8,that must be false1 ,sir4' #8,if what you say is true1 c4' ,you may as well tell a man he lies at once1 as thus indirectly impeach his veracity4 ,it is equally as rude to be proving every trifling assertion with a bet or a wager4 #8,i'll bet you fifty of it1 and so on4' ,make it then a constant rule1 in matters of no great importance1 complaisantly to submit your opinion to that of others2 for a victory of this kind often costs a man the loss of a friend4 #aa4 ,,giving advice unasked1 is another piece of rudeness2 it is1 in effect1 declaring ourselves wiser than those to whom we give it2 reproaching them with ignorance and inexperience4 ,it is a freedom that ought not to be taken with any common acquaintance1 and yet there are those1 who will be offended1 if their advice is not taken4 #8,such-a-one1' say they1 #8is above being advised4' #8,he scorns to listen to my advice2' as if it were not a mark of greater arrogance to expect every one to submit to their opinion1 than for a man sometimes to follow his own4 #ab4 ,,there is nothing so unpardonably rude as a seeming inattention to the person who is speaking to you2 though you may meet with it in others1 by all means1 avoid it yourself4 ,some ill-bred people1 while others are speaking to them1 will1 instead of looking at1 or attending to them1 perhaps fix their eyes on the ceiling1 or some picture in the room1 look out of a window1 play with a dog1 their watch chain1 or their cane1 or probably pick their nails or their noses4 ,nothing betrays a more trifling mind than this2 nor can any thing be a greater affront to the person speaking2 it being a tacit declaration1 that what he is saying is not worth your attention4 ,consider with yourself how you would like such treatment1 and1 ,i am persuaded you will never shew it to others4 #ac4 ,,surliness or moroseness is incompatible also with politeness4 ,such as1 should any one say #8he was desired to present ,mr4 ,such-a-one's respects to you1' to reply1 #8,what the devil have ,i to do with his respects8' #8,my ,lord enquired after you lately1 and asked how you did1' to answer1 #8,if he wishes to know1 let him come and feel my pulse2' and the like4 ,a good deal of this often is affected2 but whether affected or natural1 it is always offensive4 ,a man of this stamp will occasionally be laughed at1 as an oddity2 but in the end will be despised4 #ad4 ,i ,,should suppose it unnecessary to advise you to adapt your conversation to the company you are in4 ,you would not surely start the same subject1 and discourse of it in the same manner with the old and with the young1 with an officer1 a clergyman1 a philosopher1 and a woman4 ,no2 your good sense will undoubtedly teach you to be serious with the serious1 gay with the gay1 and to trifle with the triflers4 #ae4 ,,there are certain expressions which are exceedingly rude1 and yet there are people of liberal education that sometimes use them2 as #8,you don't understand me1 ,sir1' #8,it is not so4' #8,you mistake4' #8,you know nothing of the matter1 c4' ,is it not better to say8 #8,i believe1 ,i do not express myself so as to be understood4' #8,let us consider it again1 whether we take it right or not4' ,it is much more polite and amiable to make some excuse for another1 even in cases where he might justly be blamed1 and to represent the mistake as common to both1 rather than charge him with insensibility or incomprehension4 #af4 ,,if anyone should have promised you any thing1 and not have fulfilled that promise1 it would be very unpolite to tell him1 he has forfeited his word2 or if the same person should have disappointed you1 upon any occasion1 would it not be better to say1 #8,you were probably so much engaged1 that you forgot my affair2' or1 #8,perhaps it slipped your memory2' rather than1 #8,you thought no more about it1' or #8you pay very little regard to your word4' ,for1 expressions of this kind leave a sting behind them4 ,they are a kind of provocation and affront1 and very often bring on lasting quarrels4 #ag4 ,,be careful not to appear dark and mysterious1 lest you should be thought suspicious2 than which there cannot be a more unamiable character4 ,if you appear mysterious and reserved1 others will be truly so with you2 and in this case there is an end to improvement1 for you will gather no information4 ,be reserved1 but never seem so4 #ah4 ,,there is a fault extremely common with some people1 which ,i would have you to avoid4 ,when their opinion is asked1 upon any subject1 they will give it with so apparent a diffidence and timidity1 that one cannot1 without the utmost pain1 listen to them2 especially if they are known to be men of universal knowledge4 #8,your ,lordship will pardon me1' says one of this stamp1 #8if ,i should not be able to speak to the case in hand1 so well as it might be wished4'--#8,i'll venture to speak of this matter to the best of my poor abilities and dulness of apprehension4'--#8,i fear ,i shall expose myself1 but in obedience to your ,lordship's commands'--and while they are making these apologies1 they interrupt the business and tire the company4 #ai4 ,,always look people in the face1 when you speak to them1 otherwise you will be thought conscious of some guilt1 besides1 you lose the opportunity of reading their countenances1 from which you will much better learn the impression your discourse makes upon them than you can possibly do from their words2 for words are at the will of every one1 but the countenance is frequently involuntary4 #bj4 ,,if in speaking to a person1 you are not heard1 and should be desired to repeat what you said1 do not raise your voice in the repetition1 lest you should be thought angry1 on being obliged to repeat what you said before2 it was probably owing to the hearer's inattention4 #ba4 ,,one word only1 as to swearing4 ,those who addict themselves to it1 and interlard their discourse with oaths1 can never be considered as gentlemen2 they are generally people of low education1 and are unwelcome in what is called good company4 ,it is a vice that has no temptation to plead1 but is1 in every respect1 as vulgar as it is wicked4 #bb4 ,,never accustom yourself to scandal1 nor listen to it2 for though it may gratify the malevolence of some people1 nine times out of ten1 it is attended with great disadvantages4 ,the very persons you tell it to1 will1 on reflection1 entertain a mean opinion of you1 and it will often bring you into very disagreeable situations4 ,and as there would be no evil speakers1 if there were no evil hearers1 it is in scandal as in robbery2 the receiver is as bad as the thief4 ,besides1 it will lead people to shun your company1 supposing that you will speak ill of them to the next acquaintance you meet4 #bc4 ,,mimickry1 the favourite amusement of little minds1 has been ever the contempt of great ones4 ,never give way to it yourself1 nor ever encourage it in others2 it is the most illiberal of all buffoonery2 it is an insult on the person you mimick2 and insults1 ,i have often told you1 are seldom forgiven4 #bd4 ,,carefully avoid talking either of your own or other people's domestic concerns4 ,by doing the one1 you will be thought vain2 by entering into the other1 you will be considered as officious4 ,talking of yourself is an impertinence to the company2 your affairs are nothing to them2 besides they cannot be kept too secret4 ,and as to the affairs of others1 what are they to you8 ,in talking of matters that no way concern you1 you are liable to commit blunders1 and should you touch any one in a sore part1 you may possibly lose his esteem4 ,let your conversation1 then1 in mixed companies1 always be general4 #be4 ,,jokes1 bon-mots1 or the little pleasantries of one company1 will not often bear to be told in another2 they are frequently local1 and take their rise from certain circumstances1 a second company may not be acquainted with2 these circumstances1 and of course your story1 may be misunderstood1 or want explaining2 and if after you have prefaced it with1--#8,i will tell you a good thing2'--the sting should not be immediately perceived1 you will appear exceedingly ridiculous1 and wish you had not told it4 ,never then without caution repeat in one place1 what you hear in another4 #bf4 ,,in most debates1 take up the favourable side of the question2 however1 let me caution you against being clamorous1 that is1 never maintain an argument with heat1 though you know yourself right2 but offer your sentiments modestly and coolly1 and if this does not prevail1 give it up1 and try to change the subject by saying something to this effect--#8,i find we shall hardly convince one another1 neither is there any necessity to attempt it2 so let us talk of something else4' #bg4 ,,not that ,i would have you give up your opinion always2 no1 assert your own sentiments1 and oppose those of others1 when wrong2 but let your manner and voice be gentle and engaging1 and yet no ways affected4 ,if you contradict1 do it with1 #8,i may be wrong1 ,i won't be positive1 but ,i really think--,i should rather suppose--,if ,i may be permitted to say1' and close your dispute with good humour1 to shew that you are neither displeased yourself nor meant to displease the person you dispute with4 #bh4 ,,acquaint yourself with the character and situations of the company you go into1 before you give a loose to your tongue2 for1 should you enlarge on some virtue1 which any one present may notoriously want2 or should you condemn some vice1 which any of the company may be particularly addicted to1 they will be apt to think your reflections pointed and personal1 and you will be sure to give offence4 ,this consideration will naturally lead you1 not to suppose things said in general1 to be leveled at you4 #bi4 ,,low-,,bred people1 when they happen occasionally to be in good company1 imagine themselves to be the subject of every separate conversation4 ,if any part of the company whisper1 it is about them2 if they laugh1 it is at them2 and if any thing is said which they do not comprehend1 they immediately suppose it is meant of them4 ,this mistake is admirably ridiculed in one of our celebrated comedies1 #8,i am sure1' says ,scrub1 #8they were talking of me1 for they laughed consumedly4' ,now1 a well-bred person never thinks himself disesteemed by the company1 or laughed at1 unless their reflections are so gross1 that he cannot be supposed to mistake them1 and his honour obliges him to resent it in a proper manner2 however1 be assured1 gentlemen never laugh at1 or ridicule one another1 unless they are in joke1 or on a footing of the greatest intimacy4 ,if such a thing should happen once in an age1 from some pert coxcomb1 or some flippant woman1 it is better to seem not to know it1 than to make the least reply4 #cj4 ,,it is a piece of politeness not to interrupt a person in a story1 whether you have heard it before or not4 ,nay1 if a well-bred man is asked whether he has heard it2 he will answer no1 and let the person go on1 though he knows it already4 ,some are fond of telling a story1 because they think they tell it well1 others pride themselves in being the first teller of it1 and others are pleased at being thought entrusted with it4 ,now1 all these persons you would disappoint by answering yes4 ,and1 as ,i have told you before1 as the greatest proof of politeness is to make every body happy about you1 ,i would never deprive a person of any secret satisfaction of this sort1 in which ,i could gratify him by a minute's attention4 #ca4 ,,be not ashamed of asking questions1 if such questions lead to information2 always accompany them with some excuse1 and you never will be reckoned impertinent4 ,but abrupt questions1 without some apology1 by all means avoid1 as they imply design4 ,there is a way of fishing for facts1 which1 if done judiciously1 will answer every purpose1 such as1 taking things you wish to know for granted2 this will perhaps lead some officious person to set you right4 ,so again1 by saying1 you have heard so and so1 and sometimes seeming to know more than you do1 you will often get at information1 which you would lose by direct questions1 as these would put people on their guard1 and frequently defeat the very end you aim at4 #cb4 ,,make it a rule never to reflect on any body of people1 for1 reflections of this nature create many enemies4 ,there are good and bad of all professions2 lawyers1 soldiers1 parsons1 or citizens4 ,they are all men1 subject to the same passions1 differing only in their manner1 according to the way they have been bred up in4 ,for this reason1 it is unjust1 as well as indiscreet1 to attack them as a ,,corps collectively4 ,many a young man has thought himself extremely clever in abusing the clergy4 ,what are the clergy more than other men8 ,can you suppose a black gown can make any alteration in his nature8 ,fie1 fie2 think seriously1 and ,i am convinced you will never do it4 #cc4 ,,but above all1 let no example1 no fashion1 no witticism1 no foolish desire of rising above what knaves call prejudices1 tempt you to excuse1 extenuate or ridicule the least breach of morality2 but upon every occasion1 shew the greatest abhorrence of such proceedings1 and hold virtue and religion in the highest veneration4 #cd4 ,,it is a great piece of ill-manners to interrupt any one while speaking1 by speaking yourself1 or calling off the attention of the company to any foreign matter4 ,but this every child knows4 #ce4 ,,the last thing ,i shall mention is that of concealing your learning1 except on particular occasions4 ,reserve this for learned men1 and let them rather extort it from you1 than you be too willing to display it4 ,hence you will be thought modest1 and to have more knowledge than you really have4 ,never seem wise or more learned than the company you are in4 ,he who affects to shew his learning1 will be frequently questioned2 and if found superficial1 will be sneered at2 if otherwise1 he will be deemed a pedant4 ,real merit will always shew itself1 and nothing can lessen it in the opinion of the world1 but a man's exhibiting it himself4 ,,for ,god's sake1 revolve all these things seriously in your mind1 before you go abroad into life4 ,recollect the observations you have yourself occasionally made upon men and things1 compare them with my instructions1 and act wisely1 and consequently1 as they shall teach you4 ---------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ---------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ,a ,,father',s ,,legacy ,,to ,,his ,,daughters4 ,,my ,,dear ,,girls1 ,,you had the misfortune to be deprived of your mother1 at a time of life when you were insensible of your loss1 and could receive little benefit1 either from her instruction1 or her example4 ,before this comes to your hands1 you will likewise have lost your father4 ,i ,,have had many melancholy reflections on the forlorn and helpless situation you must be in1 if it should please ,god to remove me from you before you arrive at that period of life1 when you will be able to think and act for yourselves4 ,i know mankind too well4 ,i know their falsehood1 their dissipation1 their coldness to all the duties of friendship and humanity4 ,i know the little attention paid to helpless infancy4 ,you will meet with few friends disinterested enough to do you good offices1 when you are incapable of making them any return1 by contributing to their interest or their pleasure1 or to the gratification of their vanity4 ,i ,,have been supported under the gloom naturally arising from these reflections1 by a reliance on the goodness of that ,providence which has hitherto preferred you1 and given me the most pleasing prospect of the goodness of your dispositions2 and by the secret hope1 that your mother's virtues will entail a blessing on her children4 ,,the anxiety ,i have for your happiness has made me resolve to throw together my sentiments1 relating to your future conduct in life4 ,if ,i live for some years1 you will receive them with much greater advantage1 suited to your different geniuses and dispositions4 ,if ,i die sooner1 you must receive them in this very imperfect manner1--the last proof of my affection4 ,,you will all remember your father's fondness1 when perhaps every other circumstance relating to him is forgotten4 ,this remembrance1 ,i hope1 will induce you to give a serious attention to the advices ,i am now going to leave with you4--,i can request this attention with the greater confidence1 as my sentiments on the most interesting points that regard life and manners1 were entirely correspondent to your mother's1 whose judgment and taste ,i trusted much more than my own4 ,,you must expect that the advice which ,i shall give you will be very imperfect1 as there are many nameless delicacies1 in female manners1 of which none but a woman can judge4 ,,you will have one advantage by attending to what ,i am going to leave with you2 you will hear1 at least for once in your lives1 the genuine sentiments of a man1 who has no interest in flattering or deceiving you4--,i shall throw my reflections together without any studied order1 and shall only1 to avoid confusion range them under a few general heads4 ,,you will see1 in a little treatise of mine just published1 in what an honourable point of view ,i have considered your sex2 not as domestic drudges1 or the slaves of our pleasures1 but as our companions and equals2 as designed to soften our hearts and polish our manners2 and as ,thomson finely says1 ,to raise the virtues1 animate the bliss1 ,and sweeten all the toils of human life4 ,i shall not repeat what ,i have there said on this subject1 and shall only observe1 that from the view ,i have given of your natural character and place in society1 there arises a certain propriety of conduct peculiar to your sex4 ,it is this peculiar propriety of female manners of which ,i intend to give you my sentiments1 without touching on those general rules of conduct by which men and women are equally bound4 ,,while ,i explain to you that system of conduct which ,i think will tend most to your honour and happiness1 ,i shall1 at the same time1 endeavour to point out those virtues and accomplishment which render you most respectable and most amiable in the eyes of my own sex4 ,,religion4 ,,though the duties of religion1 strictly speaking1 are equally binding on both sexes1 yet certain differences in their natural character and education1 render some vices in your sex particularly odious4 ,the natural hardiness of our hearts1 and strength of our passions1 inflamed by the uncontrouled license we are too often indulged with in our youth1 are apt to render our manners more dissolute1 and make us less susceptible of the finer feelings of the heart4 ,your superior delicacy1 your modesty1 and the usual severity of your education1 preserve you1 in a great measure1 from any temptation to those vices to which we are most subjected4 ,the natural softness and sensibility of your dispositions particularly fit you for the practice of those duties where the heart is chiefly concerned4 ,and this1 along with the natural warmth of your imaginations1 renders you peculiarly susceptible of the feelings of devotion4 ,,there are many circumstances in your situation that peculiarly require the supports of religion to enable you to act in them with spirit and propriety4 ,your whole life is often a life of suffering4 ,you cannot plunge into business1 or dissipate yourselves in pleasure and riot1 as men too often do1 when under the pressure of misfortunes4 ,you must bear your sorrows in silence1 unknown and unpitied4 ,you must often put on a face of serenity and cheerfulness1 when your hearts are torn with anguish1 or sinking in despair4 ,then your only resource is in the consolations of religion4 ,it is chiefly owing to these that you bear domestic misfortunes better than we do4 ,,but you are sometimes in very different circumstances1 that equally require the restraints of religion4 ,the natural vivacity1 and perhaps the natural vanity of your sex1 are very apt to lead you into a dissipated state of life1 that deceives you1 under the appearance of innocent pleasure2 but which in reality wastes your spirits1 impairs your health1 weakens all the superior faculties of your minds1 and often sullies your reputations4 ,religion by checking this dissipation and rage for pleasure1 enables you to draw more happiness1 even from those very sources of amusement1 which when too frequently applied to1 are often productive of satiety and disgust4 ,,religion is rather a matter of sentiment than reasoning4 ,the important and interesting articles of faith are sufficiently plain4 ,fix your attention on these1 and do not meddle with controversy4 ,if you get into that1 you plunge into a chaos1 from which you will never be able to extricate yourselves4 ,it spoils the temper1 and1 ,i suspect1 has no good effect on the heart4 ,,avoid all books1 and all conversation1 that tend to shake your faith on those great points of religion which should serve to regulate your conduct1 and on which your hopes of future and eternal happiness depend4 ,,never indulge yourselves in ridicule on religious subjects2 nor give countenance to it in others1 by seeming diverted with what they say4 ,this1 to people of good-breeding1 will be a sufficient check4 ,i ,,wish you to go no farther than the ,scriptures for your religious opinions4 ,embrace those you find clearly revealed4 ,never perplex yourselves about such as you do not understand1 but treat them with silent and becoming reverence4--,i would advise you to read only such religious books as are addressed to the heart2 such as inspire pious and devout affections1 such as are proper to direct you in your conduct1 and not such as tend to entangle you in the endless maze of opinions and systems4 ,,be punctual in the stated performance of your private devotions morning and evening4 ,if you have any sensibility or imagination1 this will establish such an intercourse between you and the ,supreme ,being1 as will be of infinite consequence to you in life4 ,it will communicate an habitual cheerfulness to your tempers2 give a firmness and steadiness to your virtue1 and enable you to go through all the vicissitudes of human life with propriety and dignity4 ,i ,,wish you to be regular in your attendance on public worship1 and in receiving the communion4 ,allow nothing to interrupt your public or private devotions1 except the performance of some active duty in life1 to which they should always give place4--,in your behaviour at public worship1 observe an exemplary attention and gravity4 ,,that extreme strictness which ,i recommend to you in these duties1 will be considered by many of your acquaintance as a superstitious attachment to forms2 but in the advice ,i give you on this and other subjects1 ,i have an eye to the spirit and manners of the age4 ,there is a levity and dissipation in the present manners1 a coldness and listlessness in whatever relates to religion1 which cannot fail to infect you1 unless you purposely cultivate in your minds a contrary bias1 and make the devotional taste habitual4 ,,avoid all grimace and ostentation in your religious duties4 ,they are the usual cloaks of hypocrisy2 at least they shew a weak and vain mind4 ,,do not make religion a subject of common conversation in mixed companies4 ,when it is introduced1 rather seem to decline it4 ,at the same time1 never suffer any person to insult you by any foolish ribaldry on your religious opinions1 but shew the same resentment you would naturally do on being offered any other personal insult4 ,but the surest way to avoid this1 is by a modest reserve on the subject1 and by using no freedom with others about their religious sentiments4 ,,cultivate an enlarged charity for all mankind1 however they may differ from you in their religious opinions4 ,that difference may probably arise from causes in which you had no share1 and from which you can derive no merit4 ,,shew your regard to religion1 by a distinguishing respect to all its ministers1 of whatever persuasion1 who do not by their lives dishonour their profession2 but never allow them the direction of your consciences lest they taint you with the narrow spirit of their party4 ,,the best effect of your religion will be a diffusive humanity to all in distress4--,set apart a certain proportion of your income as sacred to charitable purposes4 ,but in this1 as well as in the practice of every other duty1 carefully avoid ostentation4 ,vanity is always defeating her own purposes4 ,fame is one of the natural rewards of virtue4 ,do not pursue her1 and she will follow you4 ,,do not confine your charity to giving money4 ,you may have many opportunities of shewing a tender and compassionate spirit where your money is not wanted4--,there is a false and unnatural refinement in sensibility1 which makes some people shun the sight of every object in distress4 ,never indulge this1 especially where your friends or acquaintances are concerned4 ,let the days of their misfortunes1 when the world forgets or avoids them1 be the season for you to exercise your humanity and friendship4 ,the sight of human misery softens the heart1 and makes it better2 it checks the pride of health and prosperity1 and the distress it occasions is amply compensated by the consciousness of doing your duty1 and by the secret endearments which nature has annexed to all our sympathetic sorrows4 ,,women are greatly deceived1 when they think they recommend themselves to our sex by their indifference about religion4 ,even those men who are themselves unbelievers dislike infidelity in you4 ,every man who knows human nature1 connects a religious taste in your sex with softness and sensibility of heart2 at least we always consider the want of it as a proof of that hard and masculine spirit1 which of all your faults we dislike the most4 ,besides1 men consider your religion as one of their principal securities for that female virtue in which they are most interested4 ,if a gentleman pretends an attachment to any of you1 and endeavours to shake your religious principles1 be assured he is either a fool1 or has designs on you which he dares not openly avow4 ,,you will probably wonder at my having educated you in a church different from my own4 ,the reason was plainly this3 ,i looked on the differences between our churches to be of no real importance1 and that a preference of one to the other was a mere matter of taste4 ,your mother was educated in the church of ,england1 and had an attachment to it1 and ,i had a prejudice in favour of every thing she liked4 ,it never was her desire that you should be baptized by a clergyman of the church of ,england1 or be educated in that church4 ,on the contrary1 the delicacy of her regard to the smallest circumstance that could affect me in the eye of the world1 made her anxiously insist it might be otherwise4 ,but ,i could not yield to her in that kind of generality4--,when ,i lost her1 ,i became still more determined to educate you in that church1 as ,i feel a secret pleasure in doing every thing that appears to me to express my affection and veneration for her memory4--,i draw but a very faint and imperfect picture of what your mother was1 while ,i endeavour to point out what you should be4#b ,footnote #b3 ,the reader will remember1 that such observations as respect equally both the sexes are all along as much as possible avoided4 ,,conduct ,,and ,,behaviour4 ,,one of the chiefest beauties in a female character is that modest reserve1 that retiring delicacy1 which avoids the public eye1 and is disconcerted even at the gaze of admiration4--,i do not wish you to be insensible to applause4 ,if you were1 you must become1 if not worse1 at least less amiable women4 ,but you may be dazzled by that admiration1 which yet rejoices your hearts4 ,,when a girl ceases to blush1 she has lost the most powerful charm of beauty4 ,that extreme sensibility which it indicates1 may be a weakness and incumbrance in our sex1 as ,i have too often felt2 but in yours it is peculiarly engaging4 ,pedants1 who think themselves philosophers1 ask why a woman should blush when she is conscious of no crime4 ,it is a sufficient answer1 that ,nature has made you to blush when you are guilty of no fault1 and has forced us to love you because you do so4--,blushing is so far from being necessarily an attendant on guilt1 that it is the usual companion of innocence4 ,,this modesty1 which ,i think so essential in your sex1 will naturally dispose you to be rather silent in company1 especially in a large one4--,people of sense and discernment will never mistake such silence for dulness4 ,one may take a share in conversation without uttering a syllable4 ,the expression in the countenance shews it1 and this never escapes an observing eye4 ,i ,,should be glad that you had an easy dignity in your behaviour at public places1 but not that confident ease1 that unabashed countenance1 which seems to set the company at defiance4--,if1 while a gentleman is speaking to you1 one of superior rank addresses you1 do not let your eager attention and visible preference betray the flutter of your heart4 ,let your pride on this occasion preserve you from that meanness into which your vanity would sink you4 ,consider that you expose yourselves to the ridicule of the company1 and affront one gentleman only to swell the triumph of another1 who perhaps thinks he does you honour in speaking to you4 ,,converse with men even of the first rank with that dignified modesty1 which may prevent the approach of the most distant familiarity1 and consequently prevent them from feeling themselves your superiors4 ,,wit is the most dangerous talent you can possess4 ,it must be guarded with great discretion and good-nature1 otherwise it will create you many enemies4 ,it is perfectly consistent with softness and delicacy2 yet they are seldom found united4 ,wit is so flattering to vanity1 that those who possess it become intoxicated1 and lose all self-command4 ,,humour is a different quality4 ,it will make your company much solicited2 but be cautious how you indulge it4--,it is often a great enemy to delicacy1 and a still greater one to dignity of character4 ,it may sometimes gain you applause1 but will never procure you respect4 ,,be even cautious in displaying your good sense4 ,it will be thought you assume a superiority over the rest of the company4 ,but if you happen to have any learning1 keep it a profound secret1 especially from the men1 who generally look with a jealous and malignant eye on a woman of great parts1 and a cultivated understanding4 ,a ,,man of real genius and candour is far superior to this meanness4 ,but such a one will seldom fall in your way2 and if by accident he should1 do not be anxious to shew the full extent of your knowledge4 ,if he has any opportunities of seeing you1 he will soon discover it himself2 and if you have any advantages of person or manner1 and keep your own secret1 he will probably give you credit for a great deal more than you possess4--,the great art of pleasing in conversation consists in making the company pleased with themselves4 ,you will more readily hear than talk yourselves into their good graces4 ,,beware of detraction1 especially where your own sex are concerned4 ,you are generally accused of being particularly addicted to this vice2 ,i think unjustly4--,men are fully as guilty of it when their interests interfere4 ,as your interests more frequently clash1 and as your feelings are quicker than ours1 your temptations to it are more frequent4 ,for this reason1 be particularly tender of the reputation of your own sex1 especially when they happen to rival you in our regards4 ,we look on this as the strongest proof of dignity and true greatness of mind4 ,,shew a compassionate sympathy to unfortunate women1 especially to those who are rendered so by the villany of men4 ,indulge a secret pleasure1 ,i may say pride1 in being the friends and refuge of the unhappy1 but without the vanity of shewing it4 ,,consider every species of indelicacy in conversation1 as shameful in itself1 and as highly disgusting to us4 ,all double entendre is of this sort4--,the dissoluteness of men's education allows them to be diverted with a kind of wit1 which yet they have delicacy enough to be shocked at1 when it comes from your mouths1 or even when you hear it without pain and contempt4 ,virgin purity is of that delicate nature1 that it cannot hear certain things without contamination4 ,it is always in your power to avoid these4 ,no man1 but a brute or a fool1 will insult a woman with conversation which he sees gives her pain2 nor will he dare to do it1 if she resent the injury with a becoming spirit4--,there is a dignity in conscious virtue which is able to awe the most shameless and abandoned of men4 ,,you will be reproached perhaps with prudery4 ,by prudery is usually meant an affectation of delicacy4 ,now ,i do not wish you to affect delicacy2 ,i wish you to possess it4 ,at any rate1 it is better to run the risk of being thought ridiculous than disgusting4 ,,the men will complain of your reserve4 ,they will assure you1 that a franker behaviour would make you more amiable4 ,but trust me1 they are not sincere when they tell you so4--,i acknowledge1 that on some occasions it might render you more agreeable as companions1 but it would make you less amiable as women2 an important distinction which many of your sex are not aware of4--,after all1 ,i wish you to have great ease and openness in your conversation4 ,i only point out some considerations which ought to regulate your behaviour in that respect4 ,,have a sacred regard to truth4 ,lying is a mean and despicable vice4--,i have known some women of excellent parts1 who were so much addicted to it1 that they could not be trusted in the relation of any story1 especially if it contained any thing of the marvellous1 or if they themselves were the heroines of the tale4 ,this weakness did not proceed from a bad heart1 but was merely the effect of vanity1 or an unbridled imagination4--,i do not mean to censure that lively embellishment of a humorous story1 which is only intended to promote innocent mirth4 ,,there is a certain gentleness of spirit and manners extremely engaging in your sex2 not that indiscriminate attention1 that unmeaning simper1 which smiles on all alike4 ,this arises1 either from an affectation of softness1 or from perfect insipidity4 ,,there is a species of refinement in luxury1 just beginning to prevail among the gentlemen of this country1 to which our ladies are yet as great strangers as any women upon earth2 ,i hope1 for the honour of the sex1 they may ever continue so3 ,i mean1 the luxury of eating4 ,it is a despicable selfish vice in men1 but in your sex it is beyond expression indelicate and disgusting4 ,,every one who remembers a few years back1 is sensible of a very striking change in the attention and respect formerly paid by the gentlemen to the ladies4 ,their drawing-rooms are deserted2 and after dinner and supper1 the gentlemen are impatient till they retire4 ,how they came to lose this respect1 which nature and politeness so well intitle them to1 ,i shall not here particularly inquire4 ,the revolutions of manners in any country depend on causes very various and complicated4 ,i shall only observe1 that the behaviour of the ladies in the last age was very reserved and stately4 ,it would now be reckoned ridiculously stiff and formal4 ,whatever it was1 it had certainly the effect of making them more respected4 ,a ,,fine woman1 like other fine things in nature1 has her proper point of view1 from which she may be seen to most advantage4 ,to fix this point requires great judgment1 and an intimate knowledge of the human heart4 ,by the present mode of female manners1 the ladies seem to expect that they shall regain their ascendancy over us1 by the fullest display of their personal charms1 by being always in our eye at public places1 by conversing with us with the same unreserved freedom as we do with one another2 in short1 by resembling us as nearly as they possibly can4--,but a little time and experience will shew the folly of this expectation and conduct4 ,,the power of a fine woman over the hearts of men1 men of the finest parts1 is even beyond what she conceives4 ,they are sensible of the pleasing illusion1 but they cannot1 nor do they wish to dissolve it4 ,but if she is determined to dispel the charm1 it certainly is in her power3 she may soon reduce the angel to a very ordinary girl4 ,,there is a native dignity1 an ingenuous modesty to be expected in your sex1 which is your natural protection from the familiarities of the men1 and which you should feel previous to the reflection that it is your interest to keep yourselves sacred from all personal freedoms4 ,the many nameless charms and endearments of beauty should be reserved to bless the arms of the happy man to whom you give your heart1 but who1 if he has the least delicacy1 will despise them1 if he knows that they have been prostituted to fifty men before him4--,the sentiment1 that a woman may allow all innocent freedoms1 provided her virtue is secure1 is both grossly indelicate and dangerous1 and has proved fatal to many of your sex4 ,,let me now recommend to your attention that elegance1 which is not so much a quality itself1 as the high polish of every other4 ,it is what diffuses an ineffable grace over every look1 every motion1 every sentence you utter4 ,it gives that charm to beauty without which it generally fails to please4 ,it is partly a personal quality1 in which respect it is the gift of nature2 but ,i speak of it principally as a quality of the mind4 ,in a word1 it is the perfection of taste in life and manners2--every virtue and every excellence1 in their most graceful and amiable forms4 ,,you may perhaps think that ,i want to throw every spark of nature out of your composition1 and to make you entirely artificial4 ,far from it4 ,i wish you to possess the most perfect simplicity of heart and manners4 ,i think you may possess dignity without pride1 affability without meanness1 and simple elegance without affectation4 ,milton had my idea1 when he says of ,eve1 ,grace was in all her steps1 ,heaven in her eye1 ,in every gesture dignity and love4 ,,amusements4 ,,every period of life has amusements which are natural and proper to it4 ,you may indulge the variety of your tastes in these1 while you keep within the bounds of that propriety which is suitable to your sex4 ,,some amusements are conducive to health1 as various kinds of exercise3 some are connected with qualities really useful1 as different kinds of women's work1 and all the domestic concerns of a family3 some are elegant accomplishments1 as dress1 dancing1 music1 and drawing4 ,such books as improve your understanding1 enlarge your knowledge1 and cultivate your taste1 may be considered in a higher point of view than mere amusements4 ,there are a variety of others1 which are neither useful nor ornamental1 such as play of different kinds4 ,i ,,would particularly recommend to you those exercises that oblige you to be much abroad in the open air1 such as walking1 and riding on horse back4 ,this will give vigour to your constitutions1 and a bloom to your complexions4 ,if you accustom yourselves to go abroad always in chairs and carriages1 you will soon become so enervated1 as to be unable to go out of doors without them4 ,they are like most articles of luxury1 useful and agreeable when judiciously used2 but when made habitual1 they become both insipid and pernicious4 ,,an attention to your health is a duty you owe to yourselves and to your friends4 ,bad health seldom fails to have an influence on the spirits and temper4 ,the finest geniuses1 the most delicate minds1 have very frequently a correspondent delicacy of bodily constitutions1 which they are too apt to neglect4 ,their luxury lies in reading and late hours1 equal enemies to health and beauty4 ,,but though good health be one of the greatest blessings of life1 never make a boast of it1 but enjoy it in grateful silence4 ,we so naturally associate the idea of female softness and delicacy with a correspondent delicacy of constitution1 that when a woman speaks of her great strength1 her extraordinary appetite1 her ability to bear excessive fatigue1 we recoil at the description in a way she is little aware of4 ,,the intention of your being taught needlework1 knitting1 and such like1 is not on account of the intrinsic value of all you can do with your hands1 which is trifling1 but to enable you to judge more perfectly of that kind of work1 and to direct the execution of it in others4 ,another principal end is to enable you to fill up1 in a tolerably agreeable way1 some of the many solitary hours you must necessarily pass at home4 ,it is a great article in the happiness of life1 to have your pleasures as independent of others as possible4 ,by continually gadding abroad in search of amusement1 you lose the respect of all your acquaintances1 whom you oppress with those visits1 which1 by a more discreet management1 might have been courted4 ,,the domestic economy of a family is entirely a woman's province1 and furnishes a variety of subjects for the exertion both of good sense and good taste4 ,if you ever come to have the charge of a family1 it ought to engage much of your time and attention2 nor can you be excused from this by any extent of fortune1 though with a narrow one the ruin that follows the neglect of it may be more immediate4 ,i ,,am at the greatest loss what to advise you in regard to books4 ,there is no impropriety in your reading history1 or cultivating any art or science to which genius or accident leads you4 ,the whole volume of ,nature lies open to your eye1 and furnishes an infinite variety of entertainment4 ,if ,i was sure that nature had given you such strong principles of taste and sentiment as would remain with you1 and influence your future conduct1 with the utmost pleasure would ,i endeavour to direct your reading in such a way as might form that taste to the utmost perfection of truth and elegance4 8,but when ,i reflect how easy it is to warm a girl's imagination1 and how difficult deeply and permanently to affect her heart2 how readily she enters into every refinement of sentiment1 and how easily she can sacrifice them to vanity or convenience20 ,i think ,i may very probably do you an injury by artificially creating a taste1 which1 if ,nature never gave it you1 would only serve to embarrass your future conduct4--,i do not want to make you any thing3 ,i want to know what ,nature has made you1 and to perfect you on her plan4 ,i do not wish you to have sentiments that might perplex you3 ,i wish you to have sentiments that may uniformly and steadily guide you1 and such as your hearts so thoroughly approve1 that you would not forego them for any consideration this world could offer4 ,,dress is an important article in female life4 ,the love of dress is natural to you1 and therefore it is proper and reasonable4 ,good sense will regulate your expence in it1 and good taste will direct you to dress in such a way as to conceal any blemishes1 and set off your beauties1 if you have any1 to the greatest advantage4 ,but much delicacy and judgement are required in the application of this rule4 ,a fine woman shews her charms to most advantage1 when she seems most to conceal them4 ,the finest bosom in nature is not so fine as what imagination forms4 ,the most perfect elegance of dress appears always the most easy1 and the least studied4 ,,do not confine your attention to dress to your public appearances4 ,accustom yourselves to an habitual neatness1 so that in the most careless undress1 in your unguarded hours1 you may have no reason to be ashamed of your appearance4--,you will not easily believe how much we consider your dress as expressive of your characters4 ,vanity1 levity1 slovenliness1 folly1 appear through it4 ,an elegant simplicity is an equal proof of taste and delicacy4 ,,in dancing1 the principal points you are to attend to are ease and grace4 ,i would have you to dance with spirit2 but never allow yourselves to be so far transported with mirth1 as to forget the delicacy of your sex4--,many a girl dancing in the gaiety and innocence of her heart1 is thought to discover a spirit she little dreams of4 ,i ,,know no entertainment that gives such pleasure to any person of sentiment or humour1 as the theatre4 ,but ,i am sorry to say1 there are few ,english comedies a lady can see1 without a shock to delicacy4 ,you will not readily suspect the comments gentlemen make on your behaviour on such occasions4 ,men are often best acquainted with the most worthless of your sex1 and from them too readily form their judgment of the rest4 ,a virtuous girl often hears very indelicate things with a countenance no wise embarrassed1 because in truth she does not understand them4 ,yet this is1 most ungenerously1 ascribed to that command of features1 and that ready presence of mind1 which you are thought to possess in a degree far beyond us2 or1 by still more malignant observers1 it is ascribed to hardened effrontery4 ,,sometimes a girl laughs with all the simplicity of unsuspecting innocence1 for no other reason but being infected with other people's laughing3 she is then believed to know more than she should do4--,if she does happen to understand an improper thing1 she suffers a very complicated distress3 she feels her modesty hurt in the most sensible manner1 and at the same time is ashamed of appearing conscious of the injury4 ,the only way to avoid these inconveniencies1 is never to go to a play that is particularly offensive to delicacy4--,tragedy subjects you to no such distress4--,its sorrows will soften and ennoble your hearts4 ,i ,,need say little about gaming1 the ladies in this country being as yet almost strangers to it4 ,it is a ruinous and incurable vice2 and as it leads to all the selfish and turbulent passions1 is peculiarly odious in your sex4 ,i have no objection to your playing a little at any kind of game1 as a variety in your amusements1 provided that what you can possibly lose is such a trifle as can neither interest nor hurt you4 ,,in this1 as well as in all important points of conduct1 shew a determined resolution and steadiness4 ,this is not in the least inconsistent with that softness and gentleness so amiable in your sex4 ,on the contrary1 it gives that spirit to a mild and sweet disposition1 without which it is apt to degenerate into insipidity4 ,it makes you respectable in your own eyes1 and dignifies you in ours4 ,,friendship1 ,,love1 ,,marriage4 ,,the luxury and dissipation that prevail in genteel life1 as they corrupt the heart in many respects1 so they render it incapable of warm1 sincere1 and steady friendship4 ,a happy choice of friends will be of the utmost consequence to you1 as they may assist you by their advice and good offices4 ,but the immediate gratification which friendship affords to a warm1 open and ingenuous heart1 is of itself a sufficient motive to court it4 ,,in the choice of your friends1 have principal regard to goodness of heart and fidelity4 ,if they also possess taste and genius1 that will still make them more agreeable and useful companions4 ,you have particular reason to place confidence in those who have shewn affection for you in your early days1 when you were incapable of making them any return4 ,this is an obligation for which you cannot be too grateful3 ,when you read this1 you will naturally think of your mother's friend1 to whom you owe so much4 ,,if you have the good fortune to meet with any who deserve the name of friends1 unbosom yourself to them with the most unsuspicious confidence4 ,it is one of the world's maxims1 never to trust any person with a secret1 the discovery of which could give you any pain2 but it is the maxim of a little mind and a cold heart1 unless where it is the effect of frequent disappointments and bad usage4 ,an open temper1 if restrained but by tolerable prudence1 will make you1 on the whole1 much happier than a reserved suspicious one1 although you may sometimes suffer by it4 ,coldness and distrust are but the too certain consequences of age and experience2 but they are unpleasant feelings1 and need not be anticipated before their time4 ,,but however open you may be in talking of your own affairs1 never disclose the secrets of one friend to another4 ,these are sacred deposites1 which do not belong to you1 nor have you any right to make use of them4 ,,there is another case1 in which ,i suspect it is proper to be secret1 not so much from motives of prudence1 as delicacy4 ,i mean in love matters4 ,though a woman has no reason to be ashamed of an attachment to a man of merit1 yet nature1 whose authority is superior to philosophy1 has annexed a sense of shame to it4 ,it is even long before a woman of delicacy dares avow to her own heart that she loves2 and when all the subterfuges of ingenuity to conceal it from herself fail1 she feels a violence done both to her pride and to her modesty4 ,this1 ,i should imagine1 must always be the case where she is not sure of a return to her attachment4 ,,in such a situation1 to lay the heart open to any person whatever1 does not appear to me consistent with the perfection of female delicacy4 ,but perhaps ,i am in the wrong4--,at the same time ,i must tell you1 that1 in point of prudence1 it concerns you to attend well to the consequences of such a discovery4 ,these secrets1 however important in your own estimation1 may appear very trifling to your friend1 who possibly will not enter into your feelings1 but may rather consider them as a subject of pleasantry4 ,for this reason1 love-secrets are of all others the worst kept4 ,but the consequences to you may be very serious1 as no man of spirit and delicacy ever valued a heart much hackneyed in the ways of love4 ,,if1 therefore1 you must have a friend to pour out your heart to1 be sure of her honour and secrecy4 ,let her not be a married woman1 especially if she lives happily with her husband1 ,there are certain unguarded moments1 in which such a woman1 though the best and worthiest of her sex1 may let hints escape1 which at other times1 or to any other person than her husband1 she would be incapable of2 nor will a husband in this case feel himself under the same obligation of secrecy and honour1 as if you had put your confidence originally in himself1 especially on a subject which the world is apt to treat so lightly4 ,,if all other circumstances are equal1 there are obvious advantages in your making friends of one another4 ,the ties of blood1 and your being so much united in one common interest1 form an additional bond of union to your friendship4 ,if your brothers should have the good fortune to have hearts susceptible of friendship1 to possess truth1 honour1 sense1 and delicacy of sentiment1 they are the fittest and most unexceptionable confidants4 ,by placing confidence in them1 you will receive every advantage which you could hope for from the friendship of men1 without any of the inconveniencies that attend such connexions with our sex4 ,,beware of making confidants of your servants4 ,dignity not properly understood very readily degenerates into pride1 which enters into no friendships1 because it cannot bear an equal1 and is so fond of flattery as to grasp at it even from servants and dependants4 ,the most intimate confidants1 therefore1 of proud people are valets-de-chamber and waiting women4 ,shew the utmost humanity to your servants2 make their situation as comfortable to them as is possible3 but if you make them your confidants1 you spoil them1 and debase yourselves4 ,,never allow any person1 under the pretended sanction of friendship1 to be so familiar as to lose a proper respect for you4 ,never allow them to tease you on any subject that is disagreeable1 or where you have once taken your resolution4 ,many will tell you1 that this reserve is inconsistent with the freedom which friendship allows4 ,but a certain respect is as necessary in friendship as in love4 ,without it1 you may be liked as a child1 but you will never be beloved as an equal4 ,,the temper and dispositions of the heart in your sex make you enter more readily and warmly into friendships than men4 ,your natural propensity to it is so strong1 that you often run into intimacies which you soon have sufficient cause to repent of2 and this makes your friendships so very fluctuating4 ,,another great obstacle to the sincerity as well as steadiness of your friendships is the great clashing of your interests in the pursuits of love1 ambition1 or vanity4 ,for these reasons1 it should appear at first view more eligible for you to contract your friendships with the men4 ,among other obvious advantages of an easy intercourse between the two sexes1 it occasions an emulation and exertion in each to excel and be agreeable3 hence their respective excellencies are mutually communicated and blended4--,as their interests in no degree interfere1 there can be no foundation for jealousy or suspicion of rivalship4 ,the friendship of a man for a woman is always blended with a tenderness1 which he never feels for one of his own sex1 even where love is in no degree concerned4 ,besides we are conscious of a natural title you have to our protection and good offices1 and therefore we feel an additional obligation of honour to serve you1 and to observe an inviolable secrecy1 whenever you confide in us4 ,,but apply these observations with great caution4 ,thousands of women of the best hearts and finest parts have been ruined by men who approached them under the specious name of friendship4 ,but supposing a man to have the most undoubted honour1 yet his friendship to a woman is so near a-kin to love1 that if she be very agreeable in her person1 she will probably very soon find a lover1 where she only wished to meet a friend4 ,let me here1 however1 warn you against that weakness so common among vain women1 the imagination that every man who takes particular notice of you is a lover4 ,nothing can expose you more to ridicule1 than the taking up a man on the suspicion of being your lover1 who perhaps never once thought of you in that view1 and giving yourselves those airs so common among silly women on such occasions4 ,,there is a kind of unmeaning gallantry much practised by some men1 which1 if you have any discernment1 you will find really harmless4 ,men of this sort will attend you to public places1 and be useful to you by a number of little observances1 which those of a superior class do not so well understand1 or have not leisure to regard1 or perhaps are too proud to submit to4 ,look on the compliments of such men as words of course1 which they repeat to every agreeable woman of their acquaintance4 ,there is a familiarity they are apt to assume1 which a proper dignity in your behaviour will be easily able to check4 ,,there is a different species of men whom you may like as agreeable companions1 men of worth1 taste and genius1 whose conversation1 in some respects1 may be superior to what you generally meet with among your own sex4 ,it will be foolish in you to deprive yourselves of an useful and agreeable acquaintance1 merely because idle people say he is your lover4 ,such a man may like your company1 without having any design on your person4 ,,people whose sentiments1 and particularly whose tastes correspond1 naturally like to associate together1 although neither of them have the most distant view of any further connexion4 ,but as this similarity of minds often gives rise to a more tender attachment than friendship1 it will be prudent to keep a watchful eye over yourselves1 lest your hearts become too far engaged before you are aware of it4 ,at the same time1 ,i do not think that your sex1 at least in this part of the world1 have much of that sensibility which disposes to such attachments4 ,what is commonly called love among you is rather gratitude1 and a partiality to the man who prefers you to the rest of your sex2 and such a man you often marry1 with little of either personal esteem or affection4 ,indeed1 without an unusual share of natural sensibility1 and very peculiar good fortune1 a woman in this country has very little probability of marrying for love4 ,,it is a maxim laid down among you1 and a very prudent one it is4 ,that love is not to begin on your part1 but is entirely to be the consequence of our attachment to you4 ,now1 supposing a woman to have sense and taste1 she will not find many men to whom she can possibly be supposed to bear any considerable share of esteem4 ,among these few1 it is a very great chance if any of them distinguishes her particularly4 ,love1 at least with us1 is exceedingly capricious1 and will not always fix where reason says it should4 ,but supposing one of them should become particularly attached to her1 it is still extremely improbable that he should be the man in the world her heart most approved of4 ,,as1 therefore1 ,nature has not given you that unlimited range in your choice which we enjoy1 she has wisely and benevolently assigned to you a greater flexibility of taste on this subject4 ,some agreeable qualities recommend a gentleman to your common good liking and friendship4 ,in the course of his acquaintance1 he contracts an attachment to you4 ,when you perceive it1 it excites your gratitude2 this gratitude rises into a preference1 and this preference perhaps at last advances to some degree of attachment1 especially if it meets with crosses and difficulties1 for these1 and a state of suspense1 are very great incitements to attachment1 and are the food of love in both sexes4 ,if attachment was not excited in your sex in this manner1 there is not one of a million of you that could ever marry with any degree of love4 ,a ,,man of taste and delicacy marries a woman because he loves her more than any other4 ,a woman of equal taste and delicacy marries him because she esteems him1 and because he gives her that preference4 ,but if a man unfortunately becomes attached to a woman whose heart is secretly pre-engaged1 his attachment1 instead of obtaining a suitable return1 is particularly offensive2 and if he persists to teaze her1 he makes himself equally the object of her scorn and aversion4 ,,the effects of love among men are diversified by their different tempers4 ,an artful man may counterfeit every one of them so as easily to impose on a young girl of an open1 generous1 and feeling heart1 if she is not extremely on her guard4 ,the finest parts in such a girl may not always prove sufficient for her security4 ,the dark and crooked paths of cunning are unsearchable1 and inconceivable to an honourable and elevated mind4 ,,the following1 ,i apprehend1 are the most genuine effects of an honourable passion among the men1 and the most difficult to counterfeit4 ,a man of delicacy often betrays his passion by his too great anxiety to conceal it1 especially if he has little hopes of success4 ,true love1 in all its stages1 seeks concealment1 and never expects success4 ,it renders a man not only respectful1 but timid to the highest degree in his behaviour to the woman he loves4 ,to conceal the awe he stands in of her1 he may sometimes affect pleasantry1 but it sits aukwardly on him1 and he quickly relapses into seriousness1 if not into dulness4 ,he magnifies all her real perfections in his imagination1 and is either blind to her failings1 or converts them into beauties4 ,like a person conscious of guilt1 he is jealous that every eye observes him2 and to avoid this1 he shuns all the little observances of common gallantry4 ,,his heart and his character will be improved in every respect by his attachment4 ,his manners will become more gentle1 and his conversation more agreeable2 but diffidence and embarrassment will always make him appear to disadvantage in the company of his mistress4 ,if the fascination continue long1 it will totally depress his spirit1 and extinguish every active1 vigorous and manly principle of his mind4 ,you will find this subject beautifully and pathetically painted in ,thomson's ,spring4 ,,when you observe in a gentleman's behaviour these marks which ,i have described above1 reflect seriously what you are to do4 ,if his attachment is agreeable to you1 ,i leave you to do as nature1 good sense1 and delicacy shall direct you4 ,if you love him let me advise you never to discover to him the full extent of your love1 no not although you marry him4 ,that sufficiently shews your preference1 which is all he is entitled to know4 ,if he has delicacy1 he will ask for no stronger proof of your affection for your sake2 if he has sense1 he will not ask it for his own4 ,this is an unpleasant truth1 but it is my duty to let you know it2 violent love cannot subsist1 at least cannot be expressed1 for any time together1 on both sides2 otherwise the certain consequence1 however concealed1 is satiety and disgust4 ,nature in this case has laid the reserve on you4 ,,if you see evident proofs of a gentleman's attachment1 and are determined to shut your heart against him1 as you ever hope to be used with generosity by the person who shall engage your own heart1 treat him honourably and humanely4 ,do not let him linger in a miserable suspense1 but be anxious to let him know your sentiments with regard to him4 ,,however people's hearts may deceive them1 there is scarcely a person that can love for any time without at least some distant hope of success4 ,if you really wish to undeceive a lover1 you may do it in a variety of ways4 ,there is a certain species of easy familiarity in your behaviour1 which may satisfy him1 if he has any discernment left1 that he has nothing to hope for4 ,but perhaps your particular temper may not admit of this4--,you may easily shew that you want to avoid his company2 but if he is a man whose friendship you wish to preserve1 you may not chuse this method1 because then you lose him in every capacity4--,you may get a common friend to explain matters to him1 or fall on many other devices1 if you are seriously anxious to put him out of suspense4 ,,but if you are resolved against every such method1 at least do not shun opportunities of letting him explain himself4 ,if you do this1 you act barbarously and unjustly4 ,if he brings you to an explanation1 give him a polite1 but resolute and decisive answer4 ,in whatever way you convey your sentiments to him1 if he is a man of spirit and delicacy1 he will give you no further trouble1 nor apply to your friends for their intercession4 ,this last is a method of courtship which every man of spirit will disdain4--,he will never whine nor sue for your pity4 ,that would mortify him almost as much as your scorn4 ,in short1 you may possibly break such a heart1 but you cannot bend it4--,great pride always accompanies delicacy1 however concealed under the appearance of the utmost gentleness and modesty1 and is the passion of all others the most difficult to conquer4 ,,there is a case where a woman may coquette justifiably to the utmost verge which her conscience will allow4 ,it is where a gentleman purposely declines to make his addresses1 till such time as he thinks himself perfectly sure of her consent4 ,this at bottom is intended to force a woman to give up the undoubted privilege of her sex1 the privilege of her refusing2 it is intended to force her to explain herself1 in effect1 before the gentleman deigns to do it1 and by this mean to oblige her to violate the modesty and delicacy of her sex1 and to invert the clearest order of nature4 ,all this sacrifice is proposed to be made merely to gratify a most despicable vanity in a man who would degrade the very woman whom he wishes to make his wife4 ,,it is of great importance to distinguish1 whether a gentleman who has the appearance of being your lover delays to speak explicitly1 from the motive ,i have mentioned1 or from a diffidence inseparable from true attachment4 ,in the one case1 you can scarcely use him too ill3 in the other1 you ought to use him with great kindness3 and the greatest kindness you can shew him1 if you are determined not to listen to his addresses1 is to let him know it as soon as possible4 ,i ,,know the many excuses with which women endeavour to justify themselves to the world1 and to their own consciences1 when they act otherwise4 ,sometimes they plead ignorance1 or at least uncertainty1 of the gentleman's real sentiments4 ,that may sometimes be the case4 ,sometimes they plead the decorums of their sex1 which enjoin an equal behaviour to all men1 and forbid them to consider any man as a lover1 till he has directly told them so4--,perhaps few women carry their ideas of female delicacy and decorum so far as ,i do4 ,but ,i must say1 you are not entitled to plead the obligation of these virtues1 in opposition to the superior ones of gratitude1 justice1 and humanity4 ,the man is entitled to all these1 who prefers you to the rest of your sex1 and perhaps whose greatest weakness is this very preference4 ,the truth of the matter is1 vanity1 and the love of admiration1 are so prevailing passions among you1 that you may be considered to make a very great sacrifice whenever you give up a lover1 till every art of coquetry fails to keep him1 or till he forces you to an explanation4 ,you can be fond of the love1 when you are indifferent to1 or even when you despise the lover4 ,,but the deepest and most artful coquetry is employed by women of superior taste and sense1 to engage and fix the heart of a man whom the world and whom they themselves esteem1 although they are firmly determined never to marry him4 ,but his conversation amuses them1 and his attachment is the highest gratification to their vanity2 nay1 they can sometimes be gratified with the utter ruin of his fortune1 fame1 and happiness4--,god forbid ,i should ever think so of all your sex4 ,i know many of them have principles1 have generosity and dignity of soul that elevates them above the worthless vanity ,i have been speaking of4 ,,such a woman1 ,i am persuaded1 may always convert a lover1 if she cannot give him her affections1 into a warm and steady friend1 provided he is a man of sense1 resolution1 and candour4 ,if she explains herself to him with a generous openness and freedom1 he must feel the stroke as a man2 but he will likewise bear it as a man3 what he suffers he will suffer in silence4 ,every sentiment of esteem will remain2 but love though it requires very little food1 and is easily surfeited with too much1 yet it requires some4 ,he will view her in the light of a married woman2 and though passion subsides1 yet a man of a candid and generous heart always retains a tenderness for a woman he has once loved1 and who has used him well1 beyond what he feels for any other of her sex4 ,,if he has not confided his own secret to any body1 he has an undoubted title to ask you not to divulge it4 ,if a woman chuses to trust any of her companions with her own unfortunate attachments1 she may1 as it is her own affair alone3 but if she has any generosity or gratitude1 she will not betray a secret which does not belong to her4 ,,male coquetry is much more inexcusable than female1 as well as more pernicious2 but it is rare in this country4 ,very few men will give themselves the trouble to gain or retain any woman's affections1 unless they have views on her either of an honourable or dishonourable kind4 ,men employed in the pursuits of business1 ambition1 or pleasure1 will not give themselves the trouble to engage a woman's affections merely from the vanity of conquest1 and of triumphing over the heart of an innocent and defenceless girl4 ,besides1 people never value much what is entirely in their power4 ,a man of parts1 sentiment1 and address1 if he lays aside all regard to truth and humanity1 may engage the hearts of fifty women at the same time1 and may likewise conduct his coquetry with so much art1 as to put it out of the power of any of them to specify a single expression that could be said to be directly expressive of love4 ,,this ambiguity of behaviour1 this art of keeping one in suspense1 is the great secret of coquetry in both sexes4 ,it is the more cruel in us1 because we can carry it what length we please1 and continue it as long as we please1 without your being so much as at liberty to complain or expostulate2 whereas we can break our chain1 and force you to explain1 whenever we become impatient of our situation4 ,i ,,have insisted the more particularly on this subject of courtship1 because it may most readily happen to you at that early period of life when you can have little experience or knowledge of the world1 when your passions are warm1 and your judgments not arrived at such full maturity as to be able to correct them4--,i wish you to possess such high principles of honour and generosity as will render you incapable of deceiving1 and at the same time to possess that acute discernment which may secure you against being deceived4 ,a ,,woman1 in this country1 may easily prevent the first impressions of love1 and every motive of prudence and delicacy should make her guard her heart against them1 till such time as she has received the most convincing proof of the attachment of a man of such merit1 as will justify a reciprocal regard4 ,your hearts indeed may be shut inflexibly and permanently against all the merit a man can possess4 ,that may be your misfortune1 but cannot be your fault4 ,in such a situation1 you would be equally unjust to yourself and your lover1 if you gave him your hand when your heart revolted against him4 ,but miserable will be your fate1 if you allow an attachment to steal on you before you are sure of a return2 or1 what is infinitely worse1 where there are wanting those qualities which alone can ensure happiness in a married state4 ,i ,,know nothing that renders a woman more despicable1 than her thinking it essential to happiness to be married4 ,besides the gross indelicacy of the sentiment1 it is a false one1 as thousands of women have experienced4 ,but if it was true1 the belief that it is so1 and the consequent impatience to be married1 is the most effectual way to prevent it4 ,,you must not think from this1 that ,i do not wish you to marry4 ,on the contrary1 ,i am of opinion1 that you may attain a superior degree of happiness in a married state1 to what you can possibly find in any other4 ,i know the forlorn and unprotected situation of an old maid1 the chagrin and peevishness which are apt to infect their tempers1 and the great difficulty of making a transition with dignity and chearfulness from the period of youth1 beauty1 admiration1 and respect1 into the calm1 silent1 unnoticed retreat of declining years4 ,i ,,see some unmarried women of active1 vigorous minds1 and great vivacity of spirits1 degrading themselves2 sometimes by entering into a dissipated course of life1 unsuitable to their years1 and exposing themselves to the ridicule of girls1 who might have been their grand-children2 sometimes by oppressing their acquaintances by impertinent intrusions into their private affairs2 and sometimes by being the propagators of scandal and defamation4 ,all this is owing to an exuberant activity of spirit1 which if it had found employment at home1 would have rendered them respectable and useful members of society4 ,i ,,see other women in the same situation1 gentle1 modest1 blessed with sense1 taste1 delicacy1 and every milder feminine virtue of the heart1 but of weak spirits1 bashful and timid3 ,i see such women sinking into obscurity and insignificance1 and gradually losing every elegant accomplishment2 for this evident reason1 that they are not united to a partner who has sense1 and worth1 and taste1 to know their value2 one who is able to draw forth their concealed qualities1 and shew them to advantage2 who can give that support to their feeble spirits which they stand so much in need of2 and who1 by his affection and tenderness1 might make such a woman happy in exerting every talent1 and accomplishing herself in every elegant art that could contribute to his amusement4 ,,in short1 ,i am of opinion1 that a married state1 if entered into from proper motives of esteem and affection1 will be the happiest for yourselves1 and make you most respectable in the eyes of the world1 and the most useful members of society4 ,but ,i confess ,i am not enough of a patriot to wish you to marry for the good of the public4 ,i wish you to marry for no other reason but to make yourselves happier4 ,when ,i am so particular in my advices about your conduct1 ,i own my heart beats with the fond hope of making you worthy the attachment of men who will deserve you1 and be sensible of your merit4 ,but heaven forbid you should ever relinquish the ease and independence of a single life1 to become the slaves of a fool1 or a tyrant's caprice4 ,,as these have been always my sentiments1 ,i shall do you but justice1 when ,i leave you in such independent circumstances as may lay you under no temptation to do from necessity what you would never do from choice4--,this will likewise save you from that cruel mortification to a woman of spirit1 the suspicion that a gentleman thinks he does you an honour or a favour when he asks you for his wife4 ,,if ,i live till you arrive at that age when you shall be capable to judge for yourselves1 and do not strangely alter my sentiments1 ,i shall act towards you in a very different manner from what most parents do4 ,my opinion has always been1 that when that period arrives1 the parental authority ceases4 ,i ,,hope ,i shall always treat you with that affection and easy confidence which may dispose you to look on me as your friend4 ,in that capacity alone ,i shall think myself entitled to give you my opinion2 in the doing of which1 ,i should think myself highly criminal1 if ,i did not to the utmost of my power endeavour to divest myself of all personal vanity1 and all prejudices in favour of my particular taste4 ,if you did not chuse to follow my advice1 ,i should not on that account cease to love you as my children4--,though my right to your obedience was expired1 yet ,i should think nothing could release me from the ties of nature and humanity4 ,,you may perhaps imagine1 that the reserved behaviour which ,i recommend to you1 and your appearing seldom at public places1 must cut off all opportunities of your being acquainted with gentlemen4 ,i am very far from intending this4 ,i advise you to no reserve1 but what will render you more respected and beloved by our sex4 ,i do not think public places suited to make people acquainted together4 ,they can only be distinguished there by their looks and external behaviour4 ,but it is in private companies alone where you can expect easy and agreeable conversation1 which ,i should never wish you to decline4 ,if you do not allow gentlemen to become acquainted with you1 you can never expect to marry with attachment on either side4--,love is very seldom produced at first sight2 at least it must have1 in that case1 a very unjustifiable foundation4 ,true love is founded on esteem1 in a correspondence of tastes and sentiments1 and steals on the heart imperceptibly4 ,,there is one advice ,i shall leave you1 to which ,i beg your particular attention3 ,before your affections come to be in the least engaged to any man1 examine your tempers1 your tastes1 and your hearts1 very severely1 and settle in your own minds1 what are the requisites to your happiness in a married state2 and as it is almost impossible that you should get every thing you wish1 come to a steady determination what you are to consider as essential1 and what may be sacrificed4 ,,if you have hearts disposed by nature for love and friendship1 and possess those feelings which enable you to enter into all the refinements and delicacies of these attachments1 consider well1 for heaven's sake1 and as you value your future happiness1 before you give them any indulgence4 ,if you have the misfortune 7for a very great misfortune it commonly is to your sex7 to have such a temper and such sentiments deeply rooted in you1 if you have spirit and resolution to resist the solicitations of vanity1 the persecution of friends 7for you will have lost the only friend that would never persecute you7 and can support the prospect of the many inconveniencies attending the state of an old maid1 which ,i formerly pointed out1 then you may indulge yourselves in that kind of sentimental reading and conversation which is most correspondent to your feelings4 ,,but if you find1 on a strict self-examination1 that marriage is absolutely essential to your happiness1 keep the secret inviolable in your own bosoms1 for the reason ,i formerly mentioned2 but shun as you would do the most fatal poison1 all that species of reading and conversation which warms the imagination1 which engages and softens the heart1 and raises the taste above the level of common life4 ,if you do otherwise1 consider the terrible conflict of passions this may afterwards raise in your breasts4 ,,if this refinement once takes deep root in your minds1 and you do not obey its dictates1 but marry from vulgar and mercenary views1 you may never be able to eradicate it entirely1 and then it will imbitter all your married days4 ,instead of meeting with sense1 delicacy1 tenderness1 a lover1 a friend1 an equal companion1 in a husband1 you may be tired with insipidity and dullness2 shocked with indelicacy1 or mortified by indifference4 ,you will find none to compassionate1 or even understand your sufferings2 for your husbands may not use you cruelly1 and may give you as much money for your clothes1 personal expense1 and domestic necessaries1 as is suitable to their fortunes4 ,the world therefore would look on you as unreasonable women1 and that did not deserve to be happy1 if you were not so4--,to avoid these complicated evils1 if you are determined at all events to marry1 ,i would advise you to make all your reading and amusements of such a kind1 as do not affect the heart nor the imagination1 except in the way of wit or humour4 ,i ,,have no view by these advices to lead your tastes2 ,i only want to persuade you of the necessity of knowing your own minds1 which1 though seemingly very easy1 is what your sex seldom attain on many important occasions in life1 but particularly on this of which ,i am speaking4 ,there is not a quality ,i more anxiously wish you to possess1 than that collected decisive spirit which rests on itself1 which enables you to see where your true happiness lies1 and to pursue it with the most determined resolution4 ,in matters of business1 follow the advice of those who know them better than yourselves1 and in whose integrity you can confide2 but in matters of taste1 that depend on your own feelings1 consult no one friend whatever1 but consult your own hearts4 ,,if a gentleman makes his addresses to you1 or gives you reason to believe he will do so1 before you allow your affections to be engaged1 endeavour in the most prudent and secret manner1 to procure from your friends every necessary piece of information concerning him2 such as his character for sense1 his morals1 his temper1 fortune and family2 whether it is distinguished for parts and worth1 or for folly1 knavery1 and loathsome hereditary diseases4 ,when your friends inform you of these1 they have fulfilled their duty4 ,if they go further1 they have not that deference for you which a becoming dignity on your part would effectually command4 ,,whatever your views are in marrying1 take every possible precaution to prevent their being disappointed4 ,if fortune1 and the pleasures it brings1 are your aim1 it is not sufficient that the settlements of a jointure and children's provisions be ample1 and properly secured2 it is necessary that you should enjoy the fortune during your own life4 ,the principal security you can have for this will depend on your marrying a good-natured generous man1 who despises money1 and who will let you live where you can best enjoy that pleasure1 that pomp and parade of life for which you married him4 ,,from what ,i have said1 you will easily see that ,i could never pretend to advise whom you should marry2 but ,i can with great confidence advise whom you should not marry4 ,,avoid a companion that may entail any hereditary disease on your posterity1 particularly 7that most dreadful of all human calamities7 madness4 ,it is the height of imprudence to run into such a danger1 and in my opinion1 highly criminal4 ,,do not marry a fool2 he is the most intractable of all animals2 he is led by his passions and caprices1 and is incapable of hearing the voice of reason4 ,it may probably too hurt your vanity to have husbands for whom you have reason to blush and tremble every time they open their lips in company4 ,but the worst circumstance1 that attends a fool1 is his constant jealousy of his wife being thought to govern him4 ,this renders it impossible to lead him1 and he is continually doing absurd and disagreeable things1 for no other reason but to shew he dares do them4 ,a ,,rake is always a suspicious husband1 because he has only known the most worthless of your sex4 ,he likewise entails the worst diseases on his wife and children1 if he has the misfortune to have any4 ,,if you have a sense of religion yourselves1 do not think of husbands who have none4 ,if they have tolerable understandings1 they will be glad that you have religion1 for their own sakes1 and for the sake of their families2 but it will sink you in their esteem4 ,if they are weak men1 they will be continually teazing and shocking you about your principles4--,if you have children1 you will suffer the most bitter distress1 in seeing all your endeavours to form their minds to virtue and piety1 all your endeavours to secure their present and eternal happiness frustrated1 and turned into ridicule4 ,,as ,i look on your choice of a husband to be of the greatest consequence to your happiness1 ,i hope you will make it with the utmost circumspection4 ,do not give way to a sudden sally of passion1 and dignify it with the name of love4--,genuine love is not founded in caprice2 it is founded in nature1 on honourable views1 on virtue1 on similarity of tastes and sympathy of souls4 ,,if you have these sentiments1 you will never marry any one1 when you are not in that situation1 in point of fortune1 which is necessary to the happiness of either of you4 ,what that competency may be1 can only be determined by your own tastes4 ,it would be ungenerous in you to take advantage of a lover's attachment1 to plunge him into distress2 and if he has any honour1 no personal gratification will ever tempt him to enter into any connection which will render you unhappy4 ,if you have as much between you as to satisfy all your reasonable demands1 it is sufficient4 ,i ,,shall conclude with endeavouring to remove a difficulty which must naturally occur to any woman of reflection on the subject of marriage4 ,what is to become of all these refinements of delicacy1 that dignity of manners1 which checked all familiarities1 and suspended desire in respectful and awful admiration8 ,in answer to this1 ,i shall only observe1 that if motives of interest or vanity have had any share in your resolutions to marry1 none of these chimerical notions will give you any pain2 nay they will very quickly appear as ridiculous in your own eyes1 as they probably always did in the eyes of your husbands4 ,they have been sentiments which have floated in your imaginations1 but have never reached your hearts4 ,but if these sentiments have been truly genuine1 and if you have had the singular happy fate to attach those who understand them1 you have no reason to be afraid4 ,,marriage indeed1 will at once dispel the enchantment raised by external beauty2 but the virtues and graces that first warmed the heart1 that reserve and delicacy which always left the lover something further to wish1 and often made him doubtful of your sensibility or attachment1 may and ought ever to remain4 ,the tumult of passion will necessarily subside2 but it will be succeeded by an endearment1 that affects the heart in a more equal1 more sensible1 and tender manner4--,but ,i must check myself1 and not indulge in descriptions that may mislead you1 and that too sensibly awake the remembrance of my happier days1 which1 perhaps1 it were better for me to forget forever4 ,i ,,have thus given you my opinion on some of the most important articles of your future life1 chiefly calculated for that period when you are just entering the world4 ,i have endeavoured to avoid some peculiarities of opinion1 which1 from their contradiction to the general practice of the world1 ,i might reasonably have suspected were not so well founded4 ,but in writing to you1 ,i am afraid my heart has been too full1 and too warmly interested1 to allow me to keep this resolution4 ,this may have produced some embarrassment1 and some seeming contradictions4 ,what ,i have written has been the amusement of some solitary hours1 and has served to divert some melancholy reflections4--,i am conscious ,i undertook a task to which ,i was very unequal2 but ,i have discharged a part of my duty4--,you will at least be pleased with it1 as the last mark of your father's love and attention4 ,,the ,,end4 ,illustration ---------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ,,contents4 page ,modesty1 #g ,lying1 #ab ,good-,breeding1 #ae ,genteel ,carriage1 #ba ,cleanliness of person1 #be ,dress1 #bf ,elegance of ,expression1 #bh ,address ,phraseology1 and #cc small-talk1 ,observation1 #ce ,absence of ,mind1 #cg ,knowledge of the ,world1 #ci ,choice of ,company1 #ea ,laughter1 #ee ,sundry ,little #eg ,accomplishments1 ,employment of ,time1 #ga ,dignity of ,manners1 #gd ,rules for ,conversation1 #gi ,a ,father's address to his #ic ,daughters1 ,religion1 #if ,conduct and ,behaviour1 #ajb ,amusements1 #aaj ,friendship1 ,love1 #aaf ,marriage1 ---------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ,transcriber's ,notes3 ,missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected4 ,typographical errors were silently corrected4 ,inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book4 ,text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores 7italics74