The Project Gutenberg eBook, Advice to Young Men, by William Cobbett
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Advice to Young Men
And (Incidentally) to Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life. In a Series of Letters, Addressed to a Youth, a Bachelor, a Lover, a Husband, a Father, a Citizen, or a Subject.
Author: William Cobbett
Release Date: March 30, 2005 [eBook #15510]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN***
E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, William Avery, and the Project
Gutenber Online Distributed Proofreading Team
COBBETT'S ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN
And (Incidentally) to Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life.
In a Series of Letters, Addressed to a Youth, a Bachelor, a Lover,
a Husband, a Father, a Citizen, or a Subject.
by
WILLIAM COBBETT
(From the Edition of 1829)
London
Henry Frowde
1906
Oxford: Horace Hart
Printer to the University
INTRODUCTION
1. It is the duty, and ought to be the pleasure, of age and experience
to warn and instruct youth and to come to the aid of inexperience. When
sailors have discovered rocks or breakers, and have had the good luck to
escape with life from amidst them, they, unless they be pirates or
barbarians as well as sailors, point out the spots for the placing of
buoys and of lights, in order that others may not be exposed to the
danger which they have so narrowly escaped. What man of common humanity,
having, by good luck, missed being engulfed in a quagmire or quicksand,
will withhold from his neighbours a knowledge of the peril without which
the dangerous spots are not to be approached?
2. The great effect which correct opinions and sound principles, imbibed
in early life, together with the good conduct, at that age, which must
naturally result from such opinions and principles; the great effect
which these have on the whole course of our lives is, and must be, well
known to every man of common observation. How many of us, arrived at
only forty years, have to repent; nay, which of us has not to repent, or
has not had to repent, that he did not, at an earlier age, possess a
great stock of
|