LETTERS

WRITTEN BY

LORD CHESTERFIELD

TO HIS SON.

EDITED, WITH OCCASIONAL ELUCIDATORY NOTES, TRANSLATIONS

OF ALL THE LATIN, FRENCH, AND ITALIAN QUOTATIONS,

AND

A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR,

BY CHARLES STOKES CAREY.

IN TWO VOLUMES.-VOL. II.

LONDON: WILLIAM TEGG.

1872.

210. k. 87.

LORD CHESTERFIELD'S

LETTERS TO HIS SON.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

LETTER CXCIII.

London, May the 27th, O. S. 1750.

YOUR apprenticeship is near out, and you are soon to set up for yourself; that approaching moment is a critical one for you, and an anxious one for me. A tradesman, who would succeed in his way, must begin by establishing a character of integrity and good manners: without the former, nobody will go to his shop at all; without the latter, nobody will go there twice. This rule does not exclude the fair arts of trade. He may sell his goods at the best price he can, within certain bounds. He may avail himself of the humour, the whims, and the fantastical tastes of his customers; but what he warrants to be good must be really so, what he seriously asserts must be true, or his first fraudulent profits will soon end in a bankruptcy. It is the same in higher life, and in the great business of the world. A man who does not solidly establish, and really deserve, a character of truth, probity, good manners, and good morals, at his first setting out in the world, may impose and shine like a meteor for a very short time, but will very soon vanish, and be extinguished with contempt. People easily pardon, in young men, the common irregularities of the senses; but they do not forgive the least vice of the heart. The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one; and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older. But should a bad young heart, accompanied with a good head (which, by the way, very seldom is the case), really reform in a more advanced age, from