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114.252 REGRIVED

NOV 7 1901.

WIS, HIST, SOCIETY.

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ADVERTISEMENT.

THE very flattering reception which the following work experienced from the Public, through seven successive editions, has encouraged the Editor to enlarge the plan, and thus render the piece of more extensive utility.

The abilities of Lord Chesterfield, to inculcate such precepts as should form the mind and fashion the manners of youth, are too universally admired to need encomium. In the Advice of that noble Earl to his Son, there are to be found such judicious remarks on men, manners, and things, connected with so intimate a knowledge of the world, that the sentiments, considered as maxims, form a very valuable system of education.

But, as the observations of different writers on the same subject are mutually illustrative of each other, to render the following work acceptable, a variety of Notes are subjoined, extracted from a small treatise on Politeness, entitled 'Galateo.'This exquisite piece was written by the Archbishop of Benevento, in the sixteenth century, about the commencement of the reign of Queen Elizabeth; and it shows (as the English Translator observes) 'to what a degree of refinement, both in manners and literature, the Italians were arrived, when we were at a period just emerging from ignorance and barbarity.' Of the treatise thus described it is only

LORD CHESTERFIELD'S

ADVICE TO HIS SON.

ABSENCE OF MIND.

An absent man is generally either a very weak or a very affected man; he is, however, a very disagreeable man in company. He is defective in all the common offices of civility; he does not enter into the general conversation, but breaks into it from time to time with some starts of his own, as if he waked from a dream. He seems wrapped up in thought, and possibly does not think at all: he does not know his most intimate acquaintance by sight, or answers them as if he were at cross purposes. He leaves his hat in one room, his cane in another, and would probably leave his shoes in a third, if his buckles, though awry, did not save them. This is a sure indication, either of a mind so weak that it cannot bear above one object at a time, or so affected, that it would be supposed to be wholly engrossed by some very great and important objects. Sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Locke, and, perhaps, five or six more since the creation, may have had a right to absence, from the intense thought their investigations required; but such liberties cannot be claimed by, nor will be tolerated in, any other persons.

No man is in any degree fit for either business or conversation, who does not command his attention to the present object, be it what it will. When I

see a man absent in mind, I choose to be absent in body; for it is almost impossible for me to stay in the room, as I cannot stand inattention and awkwardness.

I would rather be in company with a dead man, than with an absent one; for if the dead man affords me no pleasure, at least he shows me no contempt; whereas the absent man very plainly, though silently, tells me that he does not think me worth his attention. Besides, an absent man can never make any observations upon the characters, customs, and manners of the company. He may be in the best companies all his lifetime (if they would admit him), and never become the wiser :-we may as well converse with a deaf man, as an absent one. It is indeed a practical blunder to address. ourselves to a man who, we plainly perceive, neither hears, minds, nor understands us.*

*It is very unpolite to appear melancholy and thoughtful, and, as it were, absent from the company where you are, and wrapt up in your own reflections; and though, perhaps, this may be allowable in those who for many years have been entirely immersed in the study and contemplation of the liberal arts and sciences, yet, in other people, this is by no means to be tolerated. Nay, such persons would act but prudently, if at those seasons when they are disposed to indulge their own private meditations, they would sequester themselves entirely from the company of other people.

To this it may be added (by the way), that a well-bred man ought to check a disposition to gaping frequently; because this yawning propensity seems to arise from a certain weakness and disgust; when the person, who is thus disposed to be gaping continually, wants to be somewhere else rather than where he now is; and therefore

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