Letters to His Son, 1750 On the Fine Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman

DEAR FRIEND: At length you are become a Parisian, and consequently must be addressed in French; you will also answer me in the same language, that I may be able to judge of the...

DEAR BOY: I have seldom or never written to you upon the subject of religion and morality; your own reason, I am persuaded, has given you true notions of both; they speak best f...

MY DEAR FRIEND: I should not deserve that appellation in return from you, if I did not freely and explicitly inform you of every corrigible defect which I may either hear of, su...

MY DEAR FRIEND: You will possibly think, that this letter turns upon strange, little, trifling objects; and you will think right, if you consider them separately; but if you tak...

MY DEAR FRIEND: The President Montesquieu (whom you will be acquainted with at Paris), after having laid down in his book, 'De l'Esprit des Lois', the nature and principles of t...

MY DEAR FRIEND: Before you get to Paris, where you will soon be left to your own discretion, if you have any, it is necessary that we should understand one another thoroughly; w...

MY DEAR FRIEND: Yesterday I received a letter from Mr. Harte, of the 31st December, N. S., which I will answer soon; and for which I desire you to return him my thanks now. He t...

MY DEAR FRIEND: I hope that this letter will not find you still at Montpelier, but rather be sent after you from thence to Paris, where, I am persuaded, that Mr. Harte could fin...

MY DEAR FRIEND: As your journey to Paris approaches, and as that period will, one way or another, be of infinite consequence to you, my letters will henceforward be principally...

MY DEAR FRIEND: Very few people are good economists of their fortune, and still fewer of their time; and yet of the two, the latter is the most precious. I heartily wish you to...

MY DEAR FRIEND: I received yesterday your letter of the 7th, N. S., from Naples, to which place I find you have traveled, classically, critically, and 'da virtuoso'. You did rig...

MY DEAR FRIEND: This letter will, I am persuaded, find you, and I hope safely, arrived at Montpelier; from whence I trust that Mr. Harte's indisposition will, by being totally r...

MY DEAR FRIEND: You have, by this time, I hope and believe, made such a progress in the Italian language, that you can read it with ease; I mean, the easy books in it; and indee...

MY DEAR FRIEND: I have received your picture, which I have long waited for with impatience: I wanted to see your countenance from whence I am very apt, as I believe most people...

MY DEAR FRIEND: I was very glad to find by your letter of the 12th, N. S., that you had informed yourself so well of the state of the French marine at Toulon, and of the commerc...

MY DEAR FRIEND: At your age the love of pleasures is extremely natural, and the enjoyment of them not unbecoming: but the danger, at your age, is mistaking the object, and setti...

Young as you are, I hope you are in haste to live; by living, I mean living with lustre and honor to yourself, with utility to society; doing what may deserve to be written, or...

MY DEAR FRIEND: 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 tradesm...

You have hitherto had more liberty than anybody of your age ever had; and I must do you the justice to own, that you have made a better use of it than most people of your age wo...

MY DEAR FRIEND: Mr. Harte, who in all his letters gives you some dash of panegyric, told me in his last a thing that pleases me extremely; which was that at Rome you had constan...

MY DEAR FRIEND: I consider the solid part of your little edifice as so near being finished and completed, that my only remaining care is about the embellishments; and that must...

MY DEAR FRIEND: It is so long since I have heard from you, that I suppose Rome engrosses every moment of your time; and if it engrosses it in the manner I could wish, I willingl...

MY DEAR FRIEND: I acknowledge your last letter of the 24th February, N. S. In return for your earthquake, I can tell you that we have had here more than our share of earthquakes...

MY DEAR FRIEND: Since your letter from Sienna, which gave me a very imperfect account both of your illness and your recovery, I have not received one word either from you or Mr....

MY DEAR FRIEND: If the Italian of your letter to Lady Chesterfield was all your own, I am very well satisfied with the progress which you have made in that language in so short...

MY DEAR FRIEND: You are now, I suppose, at Naples, in a new scene of 'Virtu', examining all the curiosities of Herculaneum, watching the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, and surveyi...