第99章 LETTER LXX(1)

LONDON,May 15,O.S.1749.

DEAR BOY:This letter will,I hope,find you settled to your serious studies,and your necessary exercises at Turin,after the hurry and the dissipation of the Carnival at Venice.I mean that your stay at Turin should,and I flatter myself that it will,be an useful and ornamental period of your education;but at the same time I must tell you,that all my affection for you has never yet given me so much anxiety,as that which I now feel.While you are in danger,I shall be in fear;and you are in danger at Turin.Mr.Harte will by his care arm you as well as he can against it;but your own good sense and resolution can alone make you invulnerable.I am informed,there are now many English at the Academy at Turin;and I fear those are just so many dangers for you to encounter.

Who they are,I do not know;but I well know the general ill conduct,the indecent behavior,and the illiberal views,of my young countrymen.

abroad;especially wherever they are in numbers together.Ill example is of itself dangerous enough;but those who give it seldom stop there;they add their infamous exhortations and invitations;and,if they fail,they have recourse to ridicule,which is harder for one of your age and inexperience to withstand than either of the former.Be upon your guard,therefore,against these batteries,which will all be played upon you.

You are not sent abroad to converse with your own countrymen:among them,in general,you will get,little knowledge,no languages,and,I am sure,no manners.I desire that you will form no connections,nor (what they impudently call)friendships with these people;which are,in truth,only combinations and conspiracies against good morals and good manners.

There is commonly,in young people,a facility that makes them unwilling to refuse anything that is asked of them;a 'mauvaise honte'that makes them ashamed to refuse;and,at the same time,an ambition of pleasing and shining in the company they keep:these several causes produce the best effect in good company,but the very worst in bad.If people had no vices but their own,few would have so many as they have.For my own part,I would sooner wear other people's clothes than their vices;and they would sit upon me just as well.I hope you will have none;but if ever you have,I beg,at least,they may be all your own.Vices of adoption are,of all others,the most disgraceful and unpardonable.

There are degrees in vices,as well as in virtues;and I must do my countrymen the justice to say,that they generally take their vices in the lower degree.Their gallantry is the infamous mean debauchery of stews,justly attended and rewarded by the loss of their health,as well as their character.Their pleasures of the table end in beastly drunkenness,low riot,broken windows,and very often (as they well deserve),broken bones.They game for the sake of the vice,not of the amusement;and therefore carry it to excess;undo,or are undone by their companions.By such conduct,and in such company abroad,they come home,the unimproved,illiberal,and ungentlemanlike creatures that one daily sees them,that is,in the park and in the streets,for one never meets them in good company;where they have neither manners to present themselves,nor merit to be received.But,with the manners of footmen and grooms,they assume their dress too;for you must have observed them in the streets here,in dirty blue frocks,with oaken sticks in their ends,and their hair greasy and unpowdered,tucked up under their hats of an enormous size.Thus finished and adorned by their travels,they become the disturbers of play-houses;they break the windows,and commonly the landlords,of the taverns where they drink;and are at once the support,the terror,and the victims,of the bawdy-houses they frequent.These poor mistaken people think they shine,and so they do indeed;but it is as putrefaction shines in the dark.

I am not now preaching to you,like an old fellow,upon their religious or moral texts;I am persuaded that you do not want the best instructions of that kind:but I am advising you as a friend,as a man of the world,as one who would not have you old while you are young,but would have you to take all the pleasures that reason points out,and that decency warrants.I will therefore suppose,for argument's sake (for upon no other account can it be supposed),that all the vices above mentioned were perfectly innocent in themselves:they would still degrade,vilify,and sink those who practiced them;would obstruct their rising in the world by debasing their characters;and give them low turn of mind,and manners absolutely inconsistent with their making any figure in upper life and great business.