mirror of chivalry."

IX.

The plain, sensible, honest man,--a favourable, but not elevated
specimen of our race. This character, my beloved pupils, you may take in
once, but never twice. Nor can you take in such a man as a stranger; he
must be your friend or relation, or have known intimately some part
of your family. A man of this character is always open, though in a
moderate and calm degree, to the duties and ties of life. He will always
do something to serve his friend, his brother, or the man whose father
pulled his father out of the Serpentine. Affect with him no varnish;
exert no artifice in attempting to obtain his assistance. Candidly state
your wish for such or such a service, sensibly state your pretensions,
modestly hint at your gratitude. So may you deceive him once, then leave
him alone forever!

X.

The fond, silly, credulous man, all impulse and no reflection,--how my
heart swells when I contemplate this excellent character! What a Canaan
for you does it present! I envy you launching into the world with
the sanguine hope of finding all men such! Delightful enthusiasm
of youth,--would that the hope could be realized! Here is the very
incarnation of gullibility. You have only to make him love you, and no
hedgehog ever sucked egg as you can suck him. Never be afraid of his
indignation; go to him again and again; only throw yourself on his
neck and weep. To gull him once is to gull him always; get his first
shilling, and then calculate what you will do with the rest of his
fortune. Never desert so good a man for new friends; that would
be ungrateful in you! And take with you, by the way, my good young
gentlemen, this concluding maxim: Men are like lands; you will get
more by lavishing all your labour again and again upon the easy than by
ploughing up new ground in the sterile! Legislators,--wise, good, pious
men,--the Tom Thumbs of moral science, who make giants first, and
then kill them,--you think the above lessons villanous. I honour your
penetration. They are not proofs of my villiany, but of your folly! Look
over them again, and you will see that they are designed to show that
while ye are imprisoning, transporting, and hanging thousands every day,
a man with a decent modicum of cunning might practise every one of those
lessons which seem to you so heinous, and not one of your laws could
touch him!