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 footme