like art, had its apprentices, its pages, devoted body and soul to the masters who maintained them.  To-day youth is forced in a hot-house; it is trained to judge of thoughts, actions, and writings with biting severity; it slashes with a blade that has not been fleshed.  Do not make this mistake.  Such judgments will seem like censures to many about you, who would sooner pardon an open rebuke than a secret wound.  Young people are pitiless because they know nothing of life and its difficulties.  The old critic is kind and considerate, the young critic is implacable; the one knows nothing, the other knows all.  Moreover, at the bottom of all human actions there is a labyrinth of determining reasons on which God reserves for himself the final judgment.  Be severe therefore to none but yourself.

Your future is before you; but no one in the world can make his way unaided.  Therefore, make use of my father’s house; its doors are open to you; the connections that you will create for yourself under his roof will serve you in a hundred ways.  But do not yield an inch of ground to my mother; she will crush any one who gives up to her, but she will admire the courage of whoever resists her.  She is like iron, which if beaten, can be fused with iron, but when cold will break everything less hard than itself.  Cultivate my mother; for if she thinks well of you she will introduce you into certain houses where you can acquire the fatal science of the world, the art of listening, speaking, answering, presenting yourself to the company and taking leave of it; the precise use of language, the something—­how shall I explain it?—­which is no more superiority than the coat is the man, but without which the highest talent in the world will never be admitted within those portals.

I know you well enough to be quite sure I indulge no illusion when I imagine that I see you as I wish you to be; simple in manners, gentle in tone, proud without conceit, respectful to the old, courteous without servility, above all, discreet.  Use your wit but never display it for the amusement of others; for be sure that if your brilliancy annoys an inferior man, he will retire from the field and say of you in a tone of contempt, “He is very amusing.”  Let your superiority be leonine.  Moreover, do not be always seeking to please others.  I advise a certain coldness in your relations with men, which may even amount to indifference; this will not anger others, for all persons esteem those who slight them; and it will win you the favor of women, who will respect you for the little consequence that you attach to men.  Never remain in company with those who have lost their reputation, even though they may not have deserved to do so; for society holds us responsible for our friendships as well as for our enmities.  In this matter let your judgments be slowly and maturely weighed, but see that they are irrevocable.  When the men whom you have repulsed justify the repulsion, your esteem