Advice...
Advice is a form of nostalgia said Baz Luhrmann in the now infamous Sunscreen song.
Recently I have been reading William Cobbett's Advice to young men, and (incidentally) to young women, in the middle and higher ranks of life, published in London in 1829 and which I found, never-borrowed, gathering dust on a shelf in my college library. This wonderful volume contains a sort of collection of pre-Victorian etiquette rules. I have transcribed some of my favourite quotes, from the first chapter ('To a youth') below. Some is still relevant, some is not! I have retained the original punctuation, but not the randomly italicised words.
Before you assume that this gentleman must have been very morally astute himself, however, a quotation from chapter 3 'To a lover':
When I first saw my wife, she was thirteen years old, and I was within about a month of twenty-one... It was hardly light but she was out on the snow, scrubbing out a washing-tub. 'That's the girl for me,' said I...
People never should sit talking till they do not know what to talk about. It is said by country-people, that one hour's sleep before midnight is worth more than two are worth after midnight, and I believe this to be a fact; but it is useless to go to bed early and even to rise early, if the time is not well employed after rising. In general, half the morning is loitered away, the party being in a sort of half-dressed half-naked state; out of bed, indeed, but still in a sort of bedding. Those who first invented morning-gowns and slippers could have very little else to do.
I wish every English youth could see those of the United States of America; always civil, never servile.
If you have to choose, choose companions of your own rank in life as nearly as may be; but, at any rate, none to whom you acknowledge inferiority; for, slavery is too soon learned; and, if the mind be bowed down in the youth, it will seldom rise up in the man.
Young people naturally and commendably seek the society of those their own age; but, be careful and choosing in your companions; and lay this down as a rule never to be departed from, that no youth, nor man, ought to be called your friend, who is addicted to indecent talk, or who is fond of the society of prostitutes. Either of these argues a depraved taste, and even a depraved heart...
The sports of the field are the best of all, because they are conducive to health, because they are enjoyed by day-light, and because they demand early rising. The nearer that other amusements approach to these, the better they are.
...Let me beseech you to resolve to free yourselves from the slavery of the tea and coffee and other slop-kettle, if, unhappily, you have been brought up in such slavery... I pretend not to be a 'doctor;' but, I assert, that to pour regularly, every day, a pint or two of warm liquid matter down the throat, whether under the name of tea, coffee, soup, grog, or whatever else, is greatly injurious to health.
And, then, the loss of time : the time spent in pleasuring the palate : it is truly horrible to behold people who ought to be at work, sitting, at the three meals, not less than three of the about fourteen hours that they are out of their bed! A youth, habituated to this sort of indulgence, cannot be valuable to any employer.
A great misfortune of the present day is, that every one is, in his own estimate, raised above his real state of life : every one seems to think himself entitled, if not to title and great estate, at least to live without work. This mischievous, this most destructive, way of thinking has, indeed, been produced, like almost all our other evils, by the Acts of our Septennial and Unreformed Parliament.
Money is said to be power, which is, in some cases, true; and the same may be said of knowledge ; but superior sobriety, industry and activity, are a still more certain source of power ; for without these, knowledge is of little use; and, as to the power that money gives, it is that of brute force, it is the power of the bludgeon and the bayonet, and of the bribed press, tongue and pen.