19.  Endless are the instances of men of bright parts and high spirit having been, by degrees, rendered powerless and despicable, by their imaginary wants.  Seldom has there been a man with a fairer prospect of accomplishing great things and of acquiring lasting renown, than CHARLES FOX:  he had great talents of the most popular sort; the times were singularly favourable to an exertion of them with success; a large part of the nation admired him and were his partisans; he had, as to the great question between him and his rival (PITT), reason and justice clearly on his side:  but he had against him his squandering and luxurious habits:  these made him dependent on the rich part of his partisans; made his wisdom subservient to opulent folly or selfishness; deprived his country of all the benefit that it might have derived from his talents; and, finally, sent him to the grave without a single sigh from a people, a great part of whom would, in his earlier years, have wept at his death as at a national calamity.

20.  Extravagance in dress, in the haunting of play-houses, in horses, in everything else, is to be avoided, and, in youths and young men, extravagance in dress particularly.  This sort of extravagance, this waste of money on the decoration of the body, arises solely from vanity, and from vanity of the most contemptible sort.  It arises from the notion, that all the people in the street, for instance, will be looking at you as soon as you walk out; and that they will, in a greater or less degree, think the better of you on account of your fine dress.  Never was notion more false.  All the sensible people that happen to see you, will think nothing at all about you:  those who are filled with the same vain notion as you are, will perceive your attempt to impose on them, and will despise you accordingly:  rich people will wholly disregard you, and you will be envied and hated by those who have the same vanity that you have without the means of gratifying it.  Dress should be suited to your rank and station; a surgeon or physician should not dress like a carpenter! but there is no reason why a tradesman, a merchant’s clerk, or clerk of any kind, or why a shopkeeper or manufacturer, or even a merchant; no reason at all why any of these should dress in an expensive manner.  It is a great mistake to suppose, that they derive any advantage from exterior decoration.  Men are estimated by other men according to their capacity and willingness to be in some way or other useful; and though, with the foolish and vain part of women, fine clothes frequently do something, yet the greater part of the sex are much too penetrating to draw their conclusions solely from the outside show of a man:  they look deeper, and find other criterions whereby to judge.  And, after all, if the fine clothes obtain you a wife, will they bring you, in that wife, frugality, good sense, and that sort of attachment