Practical Wisdom; Or, the Manual of Life. the Counsels of Eminent Men to Their Children. Comprising Those of Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Burleigh, Sir Henry Sidney, Earl of Strafford, Francis Osborn, Sir Matthew Hale, Earl of Bedford, William Penn, and Benjam (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NOTES LORD BURLEIGH'S ADVICES TO HIS SON ROBERT. a This important truth is most concisely expressed in the old proverb, " He (hat would thrive Must ask his wife? " In the middle ranks of life especially, we see daily proofs that no man ever rises above the level of his wife; and the more amiable his natural disposition, the more he will confirm the remark; for rather than see the faults of her whom he hath chosen through a mistaken notion of her virtues, he will endeavour to persuade himself that they are merits, and seem to adopt them accordingly. b The present age is remarkable alike for the most ostentatious extravagance, and for petty savings amounting to absolute meanness, to the destruction of all real hospitality and private charity. Hence we see our nobility and gentry deserting for months, nay years together, the venerable abodes of their ancestors in the country, to disgrace their splendid mansions in the capital, by putting their servants on board wages, and thus tempting them to the daily commission of trifling thefts which too often swell into crimes of fatal mag- nitude. It would be well for persons, who thus by their idle follies and degrading parsimonies, thus prune themselves of their lineal honors and hereditary possessions, if they would contrast the liberal prudence and well-regulated munificence of Lord Burleigh's household arrangements with the inconsistencies and irregularities of their own. Lord Burleigh had four places of residence, at all of which he permanently maintained a regular establishment; while at some of them his family and suite amounted to nearly a hundred persons. His domestic expences at his house in London, were calculated at forty or fifty pounds a week when he was present, and about thirty in his absence; princely allow...