I tell you, sirs, that it is virtue that lasts; that begets real friendships and maintains them. Lay, therefore, while you are young, the foundations of a virtuous life. WILLIAM COBBETT Advice to Young Men William Cobbett, the celebrated English political writer, was born in March, 1762, at Farnham in Surrey. He took a dislike to rural occupations, and at an early age went to London, where he was employed for a few months as a copying clerk. This work was distasteful to him, and he enlisted in the army, and went with his regiment to Nova Scotia. On returning to England in 1791, he obtained his discharge, married, and went to America. In Philadelphia he commenced his career as a political writer. Cobbett's "Advice to Young Men" was published in 1830. It has always been the most popular of his books, partly because of its subject, and partly because it illustrates so well the bold and forceful directness of his style. An intensely egotistical and confident man, Cobbett believed that his own strangely inconsistent life was a model for all men. Yet, contrary to what might have been expected, he was a delightful man in the domestic circle, and the story of his marriage--which has been narrated in his "Rural Rides"--is one of the romances of literary life. The original introduction to the "Advice" contained personal reference incredible in anyone except Cobbett. Said he, "Few will be disposed to question my fitness for the task. If such a man be not qualified to give advice, no man is qualified." And he went on to claim for himself "genius and something more." He certainly had a remarkable fund of commonsense, except when his subject was himself. Cobbett died June 18, 1835. _I.--To a Youth_ You are arrived, let us suppose, at the age of from fourteen to nearly twenty, and I here offer you my advice towards making you a happy man, useful to all about you, and an honour to those from whom you sprang. Start, I beseech you, with a conviction firmly fixed in your mind that you have no right to live in this world without doing work of some sort or other. To wish to live on the labour of others is to contemplate a fraud. Happiness ought to be your great object, and it is to be found only in independence. Turn your back on what is called interest. Write it on your heart that you will depend solely on your own merit and your own exertions, for that which a man owes to favour or to partiality, that same favour or partiality is constantly liable to take from him.