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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Letters to His Son, 1753-54
+#7 in our series by The Earl of Chesterfield
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+Title: Letters to His Son, 1753-54
+
+Author: The Earl of Chesterfield
+
+Release Date: August, 2002  [Etext #3357]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 03/09/01]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Letters to His Son, 1753-54
+by The Earl of Chesterfield
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+
+Letters to His Son, 1753-54
+by The Earl of Chesterfield
+
+
+
+
+                           LETTERS TO HIS SON
+                      By the EARL OF CHESTERFIELD
+
+                     on the Fine Art of becoming a
+
+                            MAN OF THE WORLD
+
+                                 and a
+
+                               GENTLEMAN
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CLXXXV
+
+LONDON, New Years' Day, 1753
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: It is now above a fortnight since I have received a
+letter from you.  I hope, however, that you are well, but engrossed by
+the business of Lord Albemarle's 'bureau' in the mornings, and by
+business of a genteeler nature in the evenings; for I willingly give up
+my own satisfaction to your improvement, either in business or manners.
+
+Here have been lately imported from Paris two gentlemen, who, I find,
+were much acquainted with you there Comte Zinzendorf, and Monsieur
+Clairant the Academician.  The former is a very pretty man, well-bred,
+and with a great deal of useful knowledge; for those two things are very
+consistent.  I examined him about you, thinking him a competent judge.
+He told me, 'que vous parliez l'Allemand comme un Allemand; que vous
+saviez le droit public de l'empire parfaitement bien; que vous aviez le
+gout sur, et des connoissances fort etendues'.  I told him that I knew
+all this very well; but that I wanted to know whether you had l'air, les
+manieres, les attentions, en fin le brillant d'un honnete homme': his
+answer was, 'Mais oui en verite, c'est fort bien'.  This, you see, is but
+cold in comparison of what I do wish, and of what you ought to wish.
+Your friend Clairant interposed, and said, 'Mais je vous assure qu'il est
+fort poli'; to which I answered, 'Je le crois bien, vis-a-vis des Lapons
+vos amis; je vous recuse pour juge, jusqu'a ce que vous ayez ete
+delaponne, au moins dix ans, parmi les honnetes gens'.  These testimonies
+in your favor are such as perhaps you are satisfied with, and think
+sufficient; but I am not; they are only the cold depositions of
+disinterested and unconcerned witnesses, upon a strict examination.
+When, upon a trial, a man calls witnesses to his character, and that
+those witnesses only say that they never heard, nor do not know any ill
+of him, it intimates at best a neutral and insignificant, though innocent
+character.  Now I want, and you ought to endeavor, that 'les agremens,
+les graces, les attentions', ete.,should be a distinguishing part of your
+character, and specified of you by people unasked.  I wish to hear people
+say of you, 'Ah qu'il est aimable!  Quelles manieres, quelles graces,
+quel art de Claire'!  Nature, thank God, has given you all the powers
+necessary; and if she has not yet, I hope in God she will give you the
+will of exerting them.
+
+I have lately read with great pleasure Voltaire's two little histories of
+'Les Croisades', and 'l'Esprit Humain'; which I recommend to your
+perusal, if you have not already read them.  They are bound up with a
+most poor performance called 'Micromegas', which is said to be Voltaire's
+too, but I cannot believe it, it is so very unworthy of him; it consists
+only of thoughts stolen from Swift, but miserably mangled and disfigured.
+But his history of the 'Croisades' shows, in a very short and strong
+light, the most immoral and wicked scheme that was ever contrived by
+knaves, and executed by madmen and fools, against humanity.  There is a
+strange but never-failing relation between honest madmen and skillful
+knaves; and whenever one meets with collected numbers of the former, one
+may be very sure that they are secretly directed by the latter.  The
+popes, who have generally been both the ablest and the greatest knaves in
+Europe, wanted all the power and money of the East; for they had all that
+was in Europe already.  The times and the minds favored their design, for
+they were dark and uniformed; and Peter the Hermit, at once a knave and a
+madman, was a fine papal tool for so wild and wicked an undertaking.
+I wish we had good histories of every part of Europe, and indeed of the
+world, written upon the plan of Voltaire's 'de l'Esprit Humain'; for, I
+own, I am provoked at the contempt which most historians show for
+humanity in general: one would think by them that the whole human species
+consisted but of about a hundred and fifty people, called and dignified
+(commonly very undeservedly too) by the titles of emperors, kings, popes,
+generals, and ministers.
+
+I have never seen in any of the newspapers any mention of the affairs of
+the Cevennes, or Grenoble, which you gave me an account of some time ago;
+and the Duke de Mirepoix pretends, at least, to know nothing of either.
+Were they false reports? or does the French court choose to stifle them?
+I hope that they are both true, because I am very willing that the cares
+of the French government should be employed and confined to themselves.
+
+Your friend, the Electress Palatine, has sent me six wild boars' heads,
+and other 'pieces de sa chasse', in return for the fans, which she
+approved of extremely.  This present was signified to me by one Mr.
+Harold, who wrote me a letter in very indifferent English; I suppose he
+is a Dane who has been in England.
+
+Mr. Harte came to town yesterday, and dined with me to-day.  We talked
+you over; and I can assure you, that though a parson, and no member
+'du beau monde', he thinks all the most shining accomplishments of it
+full as necessary for you as I do.  His expression was, THAT IS ALL THAT
+HE WANTS; BUT IF HE WANTS THAT, CONSIDERING HIS SITUATION AND
+DESTINATION, HE MIGHT AS WELL WANT EVERYTHING ELSE.
+
+This is the day when people reciprocally offer and receive the kindest
+and the warmest wishes, though, in general, without meaning them on one
+side, or believing them on the other.  They are formed by the head, in
+compliance with custom, though disavowed by the heart, in consequence of
+nature.  His wishes upon this occasion are the best that are the best
+turned; you do not, I am sure, doubt the truth of mine, and therefore I
+will express them with a Quaker-like simplicity.  May this new year be a
+very new one indeed to you; may you put off the old, and put on the new
+man! but I mean the outward, not the, inward man.  With this alteration,
+I might justly sum up all my wishes for you in these words:
+
+          Dii tibi dent annos, de to nam caetera sumes.
+
+This minute, I receive your letter of the 26th past, which gives me a
+very disagreeable reason for your late silence.  By the symptoms which
+you mention of your illness, I both hope and believe that it was wholly
+owing to your own want of care.  You are rather inclined to be fat, you
+have naturally a good stomach, and you eat at the best tables; which must
+of course make you plethoric: and upon my word you will be very subject
+to these accidents, if you will not, from time to time, when you find
+yourself full, heated, or your head aching, take some little, easy,
+preventative purge, that would not confine you; such as chewing a little
+rhubarb when you go to bed at night; or some senna tea in the morning.
+You do very well to live extremely low, for some time; and I could wish,
+though I do not expect it, that you would take one gentle vomit; for
+those giddinesses and swimmings in the head always proceed from some
+foulness of the stomach.  However, upon the whole, I am very glad that
+your old complaint has not mixed itself with this, which I am fully
+convinced arises simply from your own negligence.  Adieu.
+
+I am sorry for Monsieur Kurze, upon his sister's account.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CLXXXVI
+
+LONDON, January 15, 1753
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: I never think my time so well employed, as when I think
+it employed to your advantage.  You have long had the greatest share of
+it; you now engross it.  The moment is now decisive; the piece is going
+to be exhibited to the public; the mere out lines and the general
+coloring are not sufficient to attract the eyes and to secure applause;
+but the last finishing, artful, and delicate strokes are necessary.
+Skillful judges will discern and acknowledge their merit; the ignorant
+will, without knowing why, feel their power.  In that view, I have thrown
+together, for your perusal, some maxims; or, to speak more properly,
+observations on men and things; for I have no merit as to the invention:
+I am no system monger; and, instead of giving way to my imagination,
+I have only consulted my memory; and my conclusions are all drawn from
+facts, not from fancy.  Most maxim mongers have preferred the prettiness
+to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth; but I have
+refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and
+confirm.  I wish you would consider them seriously, and separately, and
+recur to them again 'pro re nata' in similar cases.  Young men are as apt
+to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves
+sober enough.  They look upon spirit to be a much better thing than
+experience; which they call coldness.  They are but half mistaken; for
+though spirit, without experience, is dangerous, experience, without
+spirit, is languid and defective.  Their union, which is very rare, is
+perfection; you may join them, if you please; for all my experience is at
+your service; and I do not desire one grain of your spirit in return.
+Use them both, and let them reciprocally animate and check each other.
+I mean here, by the spirit of youth, only the vivacity and presumption of
+youth, which hinder them from seeing the difficulties or dangers of an
+undertaking, but I do not mean what the silly vulgar call spirit, by
+which they are captious, jealous of their rank, suspicious of being
+undervalued, and tart (as they call it) in their repartees, upon the
+slightest occasions.  This is an evil, and a very silly spirit, which
+should be driven out, and transferred to an herd of swine.  This is not
+the spirit of a man of fashion, who has kept good company.  People of an
+ordinary, low education, when they happen to fail into good company,
+imagine themselves the only object of its attention; if the company
+whispers, it is, to be sure, concerning them; if they laugh, it is at
+them; and if anything ambiguous, that by the most forced interpretation
+can be applied to them, happens to be said, they are convinced that it
+was meant at them; upon which they grow out of countenance first, and
+then angry.  This mistake is very well ridiculed in the "Stratagem,"
+where Scrub says, I AM SURE THEY TALKED OF ME FOR THEY LAUGHED
+CONSUMEDLY.  A well-bred man seldom thinks, but never seems to think
+himself slighted, undervalued, or laughed at in company, unless where it
+is so plainly marked out, that his honor obliges him to resent it in a
+proper manner; 'mais les honnetes gens ne se boudent jamais'.  I will
+admit that it is very difficult to command one's self enough, to behave
+with ease, frankness, and good-breeding toward those, who one knows
+dislike, slight, and injure one, as far as they can, without personal
+consequences ; but I assert that it is absolutely necessary to do it: you
+must embrace the man you hate, if you cannot be justified in knocking him
+down; for otherwise you avow the injury which you cannot revenge.
+A prudent cuckold (and there are many such at Paris) pockets his horns
+when he cannot gore with them; and will not add to the triumph of his
+maker by only butting with them ineffectually.  A seeming ignorance is
+very often a most necessary part of worldly knowledge.  It is, for
+instance, commonly advisable to seem ignorant of what people offer to
+tell you; and when they say, Have you not heard of such a thing?  to
+answer No, and to let them go on; though you know it already.  Some have
+a pleasure in telling it, because they think that they tell it well;
+others have a pride in it, as being the sagacious discoverers; and many
+have a vanity in showing that they have been, though very undeservedly,
+trusted; all these would be disappointed, and consequently displeased,
+if you said Yes.  Seem always ignorant (unless to one's most intimate
+friend) of all matters of private scandal and defamation, though you
+should hear them a thousand times; for the parties affected always look
+upon the receiver to be almost as bad as the thief: and, whenever they
+become the topic of conversation seem to be a skeptic, though you are
+really a serious believer; and always take the extenuating part.  But all
+this seeming ignorance should be joined to thorough and extensive private
+informations: and, indeed, it is the best method of procuring them; for
+most people have such a vanity in showing a superiority over others,
+though but for a moment, and in the merest trifles, that they will tell
+you what they should not, rather than not show that they can tell what
+you did not know; besides that such seeming ignorance will make you pass
+for incurious and consequently undesigning.  However, fish for facts,
+and take pains to be well informed of everything that passes; but fish
+judiciously, and not always, nor indeed often, in the shape of direct
+questions, which always put people upon their guard, and, often repeated,
+grow tiresome.  But sometimes take the things that you would know for
+granted; upon which somebody will, kindly and officiously, set you right:
+sometimes say that you have heard so and so; and at other times seem to
+know more than you do, in order to know all that you want; but avoid
+direct questioning as much as you can.  All these necessary arts of the
+world require constant attention, presence of mind, and coolness.
+Achilles, though invulnerable, never went to battle but completely armed.
+Courts are to be the theatres of your wars, where you should be always as
+completely armed, and even with the addition of a heel-piece.  The least
+inattention, the least DISTRACTION, may prove fatal.  I would fain see
+you what pedants call 'omnis homo', and what Pope much better calls ALL-
+ACCOMPLISHED: you have the means in your power; add the will; and you may
+bring it about.  The vulgar have a coarse saying, of SPOILING A SHIP FOR
+A HALFPENNY WORTH OF TAR; prevent the application by providing the tar:
+it is very easily to be had in comparison with what you have already got.
+
+The fine Mrs. Pitt, who it seems saw you often at Paris, speaking of you
+the other day, said, in French, for she speaks little English, .  .  .
+whether it is that you did not pay the homage due to her beauty, or that
+it did not strike you as it does others, I cannot determine; but I hope
+she had some other reason than truth for saying it.  I will suppose that
+you did not care a pin for her; but, however, she surely deserved a
+degree of propitiatory adoration from you, which I am afraid you
+neglected.  Had I been in your case, I should have endeavored, at least,
+to have supplanted Mr. Mackay in his office of nocturnal reader to her.
+I played at cards, two days ago, with your friend Mrs. Fitzgerald, and
+her most sublime mother, Mrs. Seagrave; they both inquired after you; and
+Mrs. Fitzgerald said, she hoped you went on with your dancing; I said,
+Yes, and that you assured me, you had made such considerable improvements
+in it, that you had now learned to stand still, and even upright.  Your
+'virtuosa', la Signora Vestri, sung here the other day, with great
+applause: I presume you are INTIMATELY acquainted with her merit.  Good
+night to you, whoever you pass it with.
+
+I have this moment received a packet, sealed with your seal, though not
+directed by your hand, for Lady Hervey.  No letter from you!  Are you not
+well?
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CLXXXVII
+
+LONDON, May 27, O. S.  1753.
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND:  I have this day been tired, jaded, nay, tormented, by
+the company of a most worthy, sensible, and learned man, a near relation
+of mine, who dined and passed the evening with me.  This seems a paradox,
+but is a plain truth; he has no knowledge of the world, no manners, no
+address; far from talking without book, as is commonly said of people who
+talk sillily, he only talks by book; which in general conversation is ten
+times worse.  He has formed in his own closet from books, certain systems
+of everything, argues tenaciously upon those principles, and is both
+surprised and angry at whatever deviates from them.  His theories are
+good, but, unfortunately, are all impracticable.  Why?  because he has
+only read and not conversed.  He is acquainted with books, and an
+absolute stranger to men.  Laboring with his matter, he is delivered of
+it with pangs; he hesitates, stops in his utterance, and always expresses
+himself inelegantly.  His actions are all ungraceful; so that, with all
+his merit and knowledge, I would rather converse six hours with the most
+frivolous tittle-tattle woman who knew something of the world, than with
+him.  The preposterous notions of a systematical man who does not know
+the world, tire the patience of a man who does.  It would be endless to
+correct his mistakes, nor would he take it kindly: for he has considered
+everything deliberately, and is very sure that he is in the right.
+Impropriety is a characteristic, and a never-failing one, of these
+people.  Regardless, because ignorant, of customs and manners, they
+violate them every moment.  They often shock, though they never mean to
+offend: never attending either to the general character, or the
+particular distinguishing circumstances of the people to whom, or before
+whom they talk; whereas the knowledge of the world teaches one, that the
+very same things which are exceedingly right and proper in one company,
+time and place, are exceedingly absurd in others.  In short, a man who
+has great knowledge, from experience and observation, of the characters,
+customs, and manners of mankind, is a being as different from, and as
+superior to, a man of mere book and systematical knowledge, as a well-
+managed horse is to an ass.  Study, therefore, cultivate, and frequent
+men and women; not only in their outward, and consequently, guarded, but
+in their interior, domestic, and consequently less disguised, characters
+and manners.  Take your notions of things, as by observation and
+experience you find they really are, and not as you read that they are or
+should be; for they never are quite what they should be.  For this
+purpose do not content yourself with general and common acquaintance;
+but wherever you can, establish yourself, with a kind of domestic
+familiarity, in good houses.  For instance, go again to Orli, for two or
+three days, and so at two or three 'reprises'.  Go and stay two or three
+days at a time at Versailles, and improve and extend the acquaintance you
+have there.  Be at home at St. Cloud; and, whenever any private person of
+fashion invites you to, pass a few days at his country-house, accept of
+the invitation.  This will necessarily give you a versatility of mind,
+and a facility to adopt various manners and customs; for everybody
+desires to please those in whose house they are; and people are only to
+be pleased in their own way.  Nothing is more engaging than a cheerful
+and easy conformity to people's particular manners, habits, and even
+weaknesses; nothing (to use a vulgar expression) should come amiss to a
+young fellow.  He should be, for good purposes, what Alcibiades was
+commonly for bad ones, a Proteus, assuming with ease, and wearing with
+cheerfulness, any shape.  Heat, cold, luxury, abstinence, gravity,
+gayety, ceremony, easiness, learning, trifling, business, and pleasure,
+are modes which he should be able to take, lay aside, or change
+occasionally, with as much ease as he would take or lay aside his hat.
+All this is only to be acquired by use and knowledge of the world,
+by keeping a great deal of company, analyzing every character,
+and insinuating yourself into the familiarity of various acquaintance.
+A right, a generous ambition to make a figure in the world, necessarily
+gives the desire of pleasing; the desire of pleasing points out, to a
+great degree, the means of doing it; and the art of pleasing is, in
+truth, the art of rising, of distinguishing one's self, of making a
+figure and a fortune in the world.  But without pleasing, without the
+graces, as I have told you a thousand times, 'ogni fatica e vana'.  You
+are now but nineteen, an age at which most of your countrymen are
+illiberally getting drunk in port, at the university.  You have greatly
+got the start of them in learning; and if you can equally get the start
+of them in the knowledge and manners of the world, you may be very sure
+of outrunning them in court and parliament, as you set out much earlier
+than they.  They generally begin but to see the world at one-and-twenty;
+you will by that age have seen all Europe.  They set out upon their
+travels unlicked cubs: and in their travels they only lick one another,
+for they seldom go into any other company.  They know nothing but the
+English world, and the worst part of that too, and generally very little
+of any but the English language; and they come home, at three or four-
+and-twenty, refined and polished (as is said in one of Congreve's plays)
+like Dutch skippers from a whale-fishing.  The care which has been taken
+of you, and (to do you justice) the care that you have taken of yourself,
+has left you, at the age of nineteen only, nothing to acquire but the
+knowledge of the world, manners, address, and those exterior
+accomplishments.  But they are great and necessary acquisitions, to those
+who have sense enough to know their true value; and your getting them
+before you are one-and-twenty, and before you enter upon the active and
+shining scene of life, will give you such an advantage over all your
+contemporaries, that they cannot overtake you: they must be distanced.
+You may probably be placed about a young prince, who will probably be a
+young king.  There all the various arts of pleasing, the engaging
+address, the versatility of manners, the brillant, the graces, will
+outweigh, and yet outrun all solid knowledge and unpolished merit.  Oil
+yourself, therefore, and be both supple and shining, for that race, if
+you would be first, or early at the goal.  Ladies will most probably too
+have something to say there; and those who are best with them will
+probably be best SOMEWHERE ELSE.  Labor this great point, my dear child,
+indefatigably; attend to the very smallest parts, the minutest graces,
+the most trifling circumstances, that can possibly concur in forming the
+shining character of a complete gentleman, 'un galant homme, un homme de
+cour', a man of business and pleasure; 'estime des hommes, recherche des
+femmes, aime de tout le monde'.  In this view, observe the shining part
+of every man of fashion, who is liked and esteemed; attend to, and
+imitate that particular accomplishment for which you hear him chiefly
+celebrated and distinguished: then collect those various parts, and make
+yourself a mosiac of the whole.  No one body possesses everything, and
+almost everybody possesses some one thing worthy of imitation: only
+choose your models well; and in order to do so, choose by your ear more
+than by your eye.  The best model is always that which is most
+universally allowed to be the best, though in strictness it may possibly
+not be so.  We must take most things as they are, we cannot make them
+what we would, nor often what they should be; and where moral duties are
+not concerned, it is more prudent to follow than to attempt to lead.
+Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CLXXXVIII
+
+BATH, October 3, 1753
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: You have set out well at The Hague; you are in love with
+Madame Munter, which I am very glad of: you are in the fine company
+there, and I hope one of it: for it is not enough, at your age, to be
+merely in good company; but you should, by your address and attentions,
+make that good company think you one of them.  There is a tribute due to
+beauty, even independently of further views; which tribute I hope you
+paid with alacrity to Madame Munter and Madame Degenfeldt: depend upon
+it, they expected it, and were offended in proportion as that tribute
+seemed either unwillingly or scantily paid.  I believe my friend
+Kreuningen admits nobody now to his table, for fear of their
+communicating the plague to him, or at least the bite of a mad dog.
+Pray profit of the entrees libres that the French Ambassador has given
+you; frequent him, and SPEAK to him.  I think you will not do amiss to
+call upon Mr. Burrish, at Aix-la-Chapelle, since it is so little out of
+your way; and you will do still better, if you would, which I know you
+will not, drink those waters for five or six days only, to scour your
+stomach and bowels a little; I am sure it would do you a great deal of
+good Mr. Burrish can, doubtless, give you the best letters to Munich;
+and he will naturally give you some to Comte Preysing, or Comte Sinsheim,
+and such sort of grave people; but I could wish that you would ask him
+for some to young fellows of pleasure, or fashionable coquettes, that,
+you may be 'dans l'honnete debauche de Munich'.  A propos of your future
+motions; I leave you in a great measure the master of them, so shall only
+suggest my thoughts to you upon that subject.
+
+You have three electoral courts in view, Bonn, Munich, and Manheim.
+I would advise you to see two of them rather cursorily, and fix your
+tabernacle at the third, whichever that may be, for a considerable time.
+For instance, should you choose (as I fancy you will, to make Manheim the
+place of your residence, stay only ten or twelve days at Bonn, and as
+long at Munich, and then go and fix at Manheim; and so, vice versa, if
+you should like Bonn or Munich better than you think you would Manheim,
+make that the place of your residence, and only visit the other two.
+It is certain that no man can be much pleased himself, or please others
+much, in any place where he is only a bird of passage for eight or ten
+days; neither party thinking it worth while to make an acquaintance,
+still less to form any connection, for so short a time; but when months
+are the case, a man may domesticate himself pretty well, and very soon
+not be looked upon as a stranger.  This is the real utility of traveling,
+when, by contracting a familiarity at any place, you get into the inside
+of it, and see it in its undress.  That is the only way of knowing the
+customs, the manners, and all the little characteristical peculiarities
+that distinguish one place from another; but then this familiarity is not
+to be brought about by cold, formal visits of half an hour: no; you must
+show a willingness, a desire, an impatience of forming connections, 'il
+faut s'y preter, et y mettre du liant, du desir de plaire.  Whatever you
+do approve, you must be lavish in your praises of; and you must learn to
+commend what you do not approve of, if it is approved of there.  You are
+not much given to praise, I know; but it is because you do not yet know
+how extremely people are engaged by a seeming sanction to their own
+opinions, prejudices, and weaknesses, even in the merest trifles.  Our
+self-love is mortified when we think our opinions, and even our tastes,
+customs, and dresses, either arraigned or condemned; as on the contrary,
+it is tickled and flattered by approbation.  I will give you a remarkable
+instance of this kind.  The famous Earl of Shaftesbury, in the flagitious
+reign of Charles the Second, while he was Chancellor, had a mind to be a
+favorite, as well as a minister of the King; in order, therefore, to
+please his Majesty, whose prevailing passion was women, my Lord kept a
+w----e, whom he had no occasion for, and made no manner of use of.  The
+King soon heard of it, and asked him if it was true; he owned it was;
+but that, though he kept that one woman, he had several others besides,
+for he loved variety.  A few days afterward, the King, at his public
+levee, saw Lord Shaftesbury at some distance, and said in the circle,
+"One would not think that that little, weak man is the greatest whore-
+master in England; but I can assure you that he is."  Upon Lord
+Shaftesbury's coming into the circle, there was a general smile; the King
+said, "This is concerning you, my Lord."  "Me, sir?" answered the
+Chancellor, with some surprise.  "Yes, you," answered the King; "for I
+had just said that you were the greatest whore-master in England!  Is it
+not true?  "Of a SUBJECT, Sir," replied Lord Shaftesbury, "perhaps I am."
+It is the same in everything; we think a difference of opinion, of
+conduct, of manners, a tacit reproach, at least, upon our own; we must
+therefore use ourselves to a ready conformity to whatever is neither
+criminal nor dishonorable.  Whoever differs from any general custom, is
+supposed both to think, and proclaim himself wiser than the rest of the
+world: which the rest of the world cannot bear, especially in a young
+man.  A young fellow is always forgiven and often applauded, when he
+carries a fashion to an excess; but never if he stops short of it.  The
+first is ascribed to youth and fire; but the latter is imputed to an
+affectation of singularity or superiority.  At your age, one is allowed
+to 'outrer' fashion, dress, vivacity, gallantry, etc., but by no means to
+be behindhand in any one of them.  And one may apply to youth in this
+case, 'Si non errasset, fecerat ille minus'.  Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CLXXXIX
+
+BATH, October 19, 1753
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND:  Of all the various ingredients that compose the useful
+and necessary art of pleasing, no one is so effectual and engaging as
+that gentleness, that 'douceur' of countenance and manner, to which you
+are no stranger, though (God knows why) a sworn enemy.  Other people take
+great pains to conceal or disguise their natural imperfections; some by
+the make of their clothes and other arts, endeavor to conceal the defects
+of their shape; women, who unfortunately have natural bad complexions,
+lay on good ones; and both men and women upon whom unkind nature has
+inflicted a surliness and ferocity of countenance, do at least all they
+can, though often without success, to soften and mitigate it; they affect
+'douceur', and aim at smiles, though often in the attempt, like the Devil
+in Milton, they GRIN HORRIBLY A GHASTLY SMILE.  But you are the only
+person I ever knew in the whole course of my life, who not only disdain,
+but absolutely reject and disguise a great advantage that nature has
+kindly granted.  You easily guess I mean COUNTENANCE; for she has given
+you a very pleasing one; but you beg to be excused, you will not accept
+it; but on the contrary, take singular pains to put on the most
+'funeste', forbidding, and unpleasing one that can possibly be imagined.
+This one would think impossible; but you know it to be true.  If you
+imagine that it gives you a manly, thoughtful, and decisive air, as some,
+though very few of your countrymen do, you are most exceedingly mistaken;
+for it is at best the air of a German corporal, part of whose exercise is
+to look fierce, and to 'blasemeer-op'.  You will say, perhaps, What, am I
+always to be studying my countenance, in order to wear this 'douceur'?  I
+answer, No; do it but for a fortnight, and you never will have occasion
+to think of it more.  Take but half the pains to recover the countenance
+that nature gave you, that you must have taken to disguise and deform it
+as you have, and the business will be done.  Accustom your eyes to a
+certain softness, of which they are very capable, and your face to
+smiles, which become it more than most faces I know.  Give all your
+motions, too, an air of 'douceur', which is directly the reverse of their
+present celerity and rapidity.  I wish you would adopt a little of 'l'air
+du Couvent' (you very well know what I mean) to a certain degree; it has
+something extremely engaging; there is a mixture of benevolence,
+affection, and unction in it; it is frequently really sincere, but is
+almost always thought so, and consequently pleasing.  Will you call this
+trouble?  It will not be half an hour's trouble to you in a week's time.
+But suppose it be, pray tell me, why did you give yourself the trouble of
+learning to dance so well as you do?  It is neither a religious, moral,
+or civil duty.  You must own, that you did it then singly to please, and
+you were, in the right on't.  Why do you wear fine clothes, and curl your
+hair?  Both are troublesome; lank locks, and plain flimsy rags are much
+easier.  This then you also do in order to please, and you do very right.
+But then, for God's sake, reason and act consequentially; and endeavor to
+please in other things too, still more essential; and without which the
+trouble you have taken in those is wholly thrown away.  You show your
+dancing, perhaps six times a year, at most; but you show your countenance
+and your common motions every day, and all day.  Which then, I appeal to
+yourself, ought you to think of the most, and care to render easy,
+graceful, and engaging?  Douceur of countenance and gesture can alone
+make them so.  You are by no means ill-natured; and would you then most
+unjustly be reckoned so?  Yet your common countenance intimates, and
+would make anybody who did not know you, believe it.  'A propos' of this,
+I must tell you what was said the other day to a fine lady whom you know,
+who is very good-natured in truth, but whose common countenance implies
+ill-nature, even to brutality.  It was Miss H----n, Lady M--y's niece,
+whom you have seen both at Blackheath and at Lady Hervey's.  Lady M--y
+was saying to me that you had a very engaging countenance when you had a
+mind to it, but that you had not always that mind; upon which Miss H----n
+said, that she liked your countenance best, when it was as glum as her
+own.  Why then, replied Lady M--y, you two should marry; for while you
+both wear your worst countenances, nobody else will venture upon either
+of you; and they call her now Mrs. Stanhope.  To complete this 'douceur'
+of countenance and motions, which I so earnestly recommend to you, you
+should carry it also to your expressions and manner of thinking, 'mettez
+y toujours de l'affectueux de l'onction'; take the gentle, the favorable,
+the indulgent side of most questions.  I own that the manly and sublime
+John Trott, your countryman, seldom does; but, to show his spirit and
+decision, takes the rough and harsh side, which he generally adorns with
+an oath, to seem more formidable.  This he only thinks fine; for to do
+John justice, he is commonly as good-natured as anybody.  These are among
+the many little things which you have not, and I have, lived long enough
+in the world to know of what infinite consequence they are in the course
+of life.  Reason then, I repeat it again, within yourself,
+CONSEQUENTIALLY; and let not the pains you have taken, and still take,
+to please in some things be a 'pure perte', by your negligence of, and
+inattention to others of much less trouble, and much more consequence.
+
+I have been of late much engaged, or rather bewildered, in Oriental
+history, particularly that of the Jews, since the destruction of their
+temple, and their dispersion by Titus; but the confusion and uncertainty
+of the whole, and the monstrous extravagances and falsehoods of the
+greatest part of it, disgusted me extremely.  Their Talmud, their
+Mischna, their Targums, and other traditions and writings of their
+Rabbins and Doctors, who were most of them Cabalists, are really more
+extravagant and absurd, if possible, than all that you have read in Comte
+de Gabalis; and indeed most of his stuff is taken from them.  Take this
+sample of their nonsense, which is transmitted in the writings of one of
+their most considerable Rabbins: "One Abas Saul, a man of ten feet high,
+was digging a grave, and happened to find the eye of Goliah, in which he
+thought proper to bury himself, and so he did, all but his head, which
+the Giant's eye was unfortunately not quite deep enough to receive."
+This, I assure you, is the most modest lie of ten thousand.  I have also
+read the Turkish history which, excepting the religious part, is not
+fabulous, though very possibly not true.  For the Turks, having no notion
+of letters and being, even by their religion, forbid the use of them,
+except for reading and transcribing the Koran, they have no historians of
+their own, nor any authentic records nor memorials for other historians
+to work upon; so that what histories we have of that country are written
+by foreigners; as Platina, Sir Paul Rycaut, Prince Cantimer, etc., or
+else snatches only of particular and short periods, by some who happened
+to reside there at those times; such as Busbequius, whom I have just
+finished.  I like him, as far as he goes, much the best of any of them:
+but then his account is, properly, only an account of his own Embassy,
+from the Emperor Charles the Fifth to Solyman the Magnificent.  However,
+there he gives, episodically, the best account I know of the customs and
+manners of the Turks, and of the nature of that government, which is a
+most extraordinary one.  For, despotic as it always seems, and sometimes
+is, it is in truth a military republic, and the real power resides in the
+Janissaries; who sometimes order their Sultan to strangle his Vizir, and
+sometimes the Vizir to depose or strangle his Sultan, according as they
+happen to be angry at the one or the other.  I own I am glad that the
+capital strangler should, in his turn, be STRANGLE-ABLE, and now and then
+strangled; for I know of no brute so fierce, nor no criminal so guilty,
+as the creature called a Sovereign, whether King, Sultan, or Sophy, who
+thinks himself, either by divine or human right, vested with an absolute
+power of destroying his fellow-creatures; or who, without inquiring into
+his right, lawlessly exerts that power.  The most excusable of all those
+human monsters are the Turks, whose religion teaches them inevitable
+fatalism.  A propos of the Turks, my Loyola, I pretend, is superior to
+your Sultan.  Perhaps you think this impossible, and wonder who this
+Loyola is.  Know then, that I have had a Barbet brought me from France,
+so exactly like the Sultan that he has been mistaken for him several
+times; only his snout is shorter, and his ears longer than the Sultan's.
+He has also the acquired knowledge of the Sultan; and I am apt to think
+that he studied under the same master at Paris.  His habit and his white
+band show him to be an ecclesiastic; and his begging, which he does very
+earnestly, proves him to be of a mendicant order; which, added to his
+flattery and insinuation, make him supposed to be a Jesuit, and have
+acquired him the name of Loyola.  I must not omit too, that when he
+breaks wind he smells exactly like the Sultan.
+
+I do not yet hear one jot the better for all my bathings and pumpings,
+though I have been here already full half my time; I consequently go very
+little into company, being very little fit for any.  I hope you keep
+company enough for us both; you will get more by that, than I shall by
+all my reading.  I read simply to amuse myself and fill up my time, of
+which I have too much; but you have two much better reasons for going
+into company, pleasure and profit.  May you find a great deal of both in
+a great deal of company!  Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXC
+
+LONDON, November 20, 1753
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND:  Two mails are now due from Holland, so that I have no
+letter from you to acknowledge; but that, you know, by long experience,
+does not hinder my writing to you.  I always receive your letters with
+pleasure; but I mean, and endeavor, that you should receive mine with
+some profit; preferring always your advantage to my own pleasure.
+
+If you find yourself well settled and naturalized at Manheim, stay there
+some time, and do not leave a certain for an uncertain good; but if you
+think you shall be as well, or better established at Munich, go there as
+soon as you please; and if disappointed, you can always return to Manheim
+I mentioned, in a former letter, your passing the Carnival at Berlin,
+which I think may be both useful and pleasing to you; however, do as you
+will; but let me know what you resolve: That King and that country have,
+and will have, so great a share in the affairs of Europe, that they are
+well worth being thoroughly known.
+
+Whether, where you are now, or ever may be hereafter, you speak French,
+German, or English most, I earnestly recommend to you a particular
+attention to the propriety and elegance of your style; employ the best
+words you can find in the language, avoid cacophony, and make your
+periods as harmonious as you can.  I need not, I am sure, tell you what
+you must often have felt, how much the elegance of diction adorns the
+best thoughts, and palliates the worst.  In the House of Commons it is
+almost everything; and, indeed, in every assembly, whether public or
+private.  Words, which are the dress of thoughts, deserve surely more
+care than clothes, which are only the dress of the person, and which,
+however, ought to have their share of attention.  If you attend to your
+style in any one language, it will give you a habit of attending to it in
+every other; and if once you speak either French or German very
+elegantly, you will afterward speak much the better English for it.
+I repeat it to you again, for at least the thousandth time, exert your
+whole attention now in acquiring the ornamental parts of character.
+People know very little of the world, and talk nonsense, when they talk
+of plainness and solidity unadorned: they will do in nothing; mankind has
+been long out of a state of nature, and the golden age of native
+simplicity will never return.  Whether for the better or the worse, no
+matter; but we are refined; and plain manners, plain dress, and plain
+diction, would as little do in life, as acorns, herbage, and the water of
+the neighboring spring, would do at table.  Some people are just come,
+who interrupt me in the middle of my sermon; so good-night.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXCI
+
+LONDON, November 26, 1753
+
+DEAR FRIEND:  Fine doings at Manheim!  If one may give credit to the
+weekly histories of Monsieur Roderigue, the finest writer among the
+moderns; not only 'des chasses brillantes et nombreuses des operas ou les
+acteurs se surpassent les jours des Saints de L. L. A. A. E. E.
+serenissimes celebres; en grand gala'; but to crown the whole, Monsieur
+Zuchmantel is happily arrived, and Monsieur Wartenslebeu hourly expected.
+I hope that you are 'pars magna' of all these delights; though, as Noll
+Bluff says, in the "Old Bachelor," THAT RASCALLY GAZETTEER TAKES NO MORE
+NOTICE OF YOU THAN IF YOU WERE NOT IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING.  I should
+think that he might at least have taken notice that in these rejoicings
+you appeared with a rejoicing, and not a gloomy countenance; and you
+distinguished yourself in that numerous and shining company, by your air,
+dress, address, and attentions.  If this was the case, as I will both
+hope and suppose it was, I will, if you require it, have him written to,
+to do you justice in his next 'supplement'.  Seriously, I am very glad
+that you are whirled in that 'tourbillon' of pleasures; they smooth,
+polish, and rub off rough corners: perhaps too, you have some particular
+COLLISION, which is still more effectual.
+
+Schannat's "History of the Palatinate" was, I find, written originally in
+German, in which language I suppose it is that you have read it; but,
+as I must humbly content myself with the French translation, Vaillant has
+sent for it for me from Holland, so that I have not yet read it.  While
+you are in the Palatinate, you do very well to read everything relative
+to it; you will do still better if you make that reading the foundation
+of your inquiries into the more minute circumstances and anecdotes of
+that country, whenever you are in company with informed and knowing
+people.
+
+The Ministers here, intimidated on the absurd and groundless clamors of
+the mob, have, very weakly in my mind, repealed, this session, the bill
+which they had passed in the last for rendering Jews capable of being
+naturalized by subsequent acts of parliament.  The clamorers triumph, and
+will doubtless make further demands, which, if not granted, this piece of
+complaisance will soon be forgotten.  Nothing is truer in politics, than
+this reflection of the Cardinal de Retz, 'Que le peuple craint toujours
+quand on ne le craint pas'; and consequently they grow unreasonable and
+insolent, when they find that they are feared.  Wise and honest governors
+will never, if they can help it, give the people just cause to complain;
+but then, on the other hand, they will firmly withstand groundless
+clamor.  Besides that this noise against the Jew bill proceeds from that
+narrow mobspirit of INTOLERATION in religious, and inhospitality in civil
+matters; both which all wise governments should oppose.
+
+The confusion in France increases daily, as, no doubt, you are informed
+where you are.  There is an answer of the clergy to the remonstrances of
+the parliament, lately published, which was sent me by the last post from
+France, and which I would have sent you, inclosed in this, were it not
+too bulky.  Very probably you may see it at Manheim, from the French
+Minister: it is very well worth your reading, being most artfully and
+plausibly written, though founded upon false principles; the 'jus
+divinum' of the clergy, and consequently their supremacy in all matters
+of faith and doctrine are asserted; both which I absolutely deny.  Were
+those two points allowed the clergy of any country whatsoever, they must
+necessarily govern that country absolutely; everything being, directly or
+indirectly, relative to faith or doctrine; and whoever is supposed to
+have the power of saving and damning souls to all eternity (which power
+the clergy pretend to), will be much more considered, and better obeyed,
+than any civil power that forms no pretensions beyond this world.
+Whereas, in truth, the clergy in every country are, like all other
+subjects, dependent upon the supreme legislative power, and are appointed
+by that power under whatever restrictions and limitations it pleases, to
+keep up decency and decorum in the church, just as constables are to keep
+peace in the parish.  This Fra Paolo has clearly proved, even upon their
+own principles of the Old and New Testament, in his book 'de Beneficiis',
+which I recommend to you to read with attention; it is short.  Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXCII
+
+LONDON, December 25, 1753
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND:  Yesterday again I received two letters at once from you,
+the one of the 7th, the other of the 15th, from Manheim.
+
+You never had in your life so good a reason for not writing, either to me
+or to anybody else, as your sore finger lately furnished you.  I believe
+it was painful, and I am glad it is cured; but a sore finger, however
+painful, is a much less evil than laziness, of either body or mind, and
+attended by fewer ill consequences.
+
+I am very glad to hear that you were distinguished at the court of
+Manheim from the rest of your countrymen and fellow-travelers: it is a
+sign that you had better manners and address than they; for take it for
+granted, the best-bred people will always be the best received wherever
+they go.  Good manners are the settled medium of social, as specie is of
+commercial life; returns are equally expected for both; and people will
+no more advance their civility to a bear, than their money to a bankrupt.
+I really both hope and believe, that the German courts will do you a
+great deal of good; their ceremony and restraint being the proper
+correctives and antidotes for your negligence and inattention.  I believe
+they would not greatly relish your weltering in your own laziness, and an
+easy chair; nor take it very kindly, if, when they spoke to you or you to
+them, you looked another way, as much as to say, kiss my b----h.  As they
+give, so they require attention; and, by the way, take this maxim for an
+undoubted truth, That no young man can possibly improve in any company,
+for which he has not respect enough to be under some degree of restraint.
+
+I dare not trust to Meyssonier's report of his Rhenish, his Burgundy not
+having answered either his account or my expectations.  I doubt, as a
+wine merchant, he is the 'perfidus caupo', whatever he may be as a
+banker.  I shall therefore venture upon none of his wine; but delay
+making my provision of Old Hock, till I go abroad myself next spring: as
+I told you in the utmost secrecy, in my last, that I intend to do; and
+then probably I may taste some that I like, and go upon sure ground.
+There is commonly very good, both at Aix-la-Chapelle and Liege, where I
+formerly got some excellent, which I carried with me to Spa, where I
+drank no other wine.
+
+As my letters to you frequently miscarry, I will repeat in this that part
+of my last which related to your future motions.  Whenever you shall be
+tired of Berlin, go to Dresden; where Sir Charles Williams will be, who
+will receive you with open arms.  He dined with me to-day, and sets out
+for Dresden in about six weeks.  He spoke of you with great kindness and
+impatience to see you again.  He will trust and employ you in business
+(and he is now in the whole secret of importance) till we fix our place
+to meet in: which probably will be Spa.  Wherever you are, inform
+yourself minutely of, and attend particularly to the affairs of France;
+they grow serious, and in my opinion will grow more and more so every
+day.  The King is despised and I do not wonder at it; but he has brought
+it about to be hated at the same time, which seldom happens to the same
+man.  His ministers are known to be as disunited as incapable; he
+hesitates between the Church and the parliaments, like the ass in the
+fable, that starved between two hampers of hay: too much in love with his
+mistress to part with her, and too much afraid of his soul to enjoy her;
+jealous of the parliaments, who would support his authority; and a
+devoted bigot to the Church, that would destroy it.  The people are poor,
+consequently discontented; those who have religion, are divided in their
+notions of it; which is saying that they hate one another.  The clergy
+never do forgive; much less will they forgive the parliament; the
+parliament never will forgive them.  The army must, without doubt, take,
+in their own minds at last, different parts in all these disputes, which
+upon occasion would break out.  Armies, though always the supporters and
+tools of absolute power for the time being, are always the destroyers of
+it, too, by frequently changing the hands in which they think proper to
+lodge it.  This was the case of the Praetorian bands, who deposed and
+murdered the monsters they had raised to oppress mankind.  The
+Janissaries in turkey, and the regiments of guards in Russia, do the same
+now.  The French nation reasons freely, which they never did before, upon
+matters of religion and government, and begin to be 'sprejiudicati'; the
+officers do so too; in short, all the symptoms, which I have ever met
+with in history previous to great changes and revolutions in government,
+now exist, and daily increase, in France.  I am glad of it; the rest of
+Europe will be the quieter, and have time to recover.  England, I am
+sure, wants rest, for it wants men and money; the Republic of the United
+Provinces wants both still more; the other Powers cannot well dance, when
+neither France, nor the maritime powers, can, as they used to do, pay the
+piper.  The first squabble in Europe, that I foresee, will be about the
+Crown of Poland, should the present King die: and therefore I wish his
+Majesty a long life and a merry Christmas.  So much for foreign politics;
+but 'a propos' of them, pray take care, while you are in those parts of
+Germany, to inform yourself correctly of all the details, discussions,
+and agreements, which the several wars, confiscations, bans, and
+treaties, occasioned between the Bavarian and Palatine Electorates; they
+are interesting and curious.
+
+I shall not, upon the occasion of the approaching new year, repeat to you
+the wishes which I continue to form for you; you know them all already,
+and you know that it is absolutely in your power to satisfy most of them.
+Among many other wishes, this is my most earnest one:  That you would
+open the new year with a most solemn and devout sacrifice to the Graces;
+who never reject those that supplicate them with fervor; without them,
+let me tell you, that your friend Dame Fortune will stand you in little
+stead; may they all be your friends!  Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXCIII
+
+LONDON, January 15, 1754
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: I have this moment received your letter of the 26th past
+from Munich.  Since you are got so well out of the distress and dangers
+of your journey from Manheim, I am glad that you were in them:
+
+                    "Condisce i diletti
+                    Memorie di pene,
+                    Ne sa che sia bene
+                    Chi mal non soffri."
+
+They were but little samples of the much greater distress and dangers
+which you must expect to meet within your great, and I hope, long journey
+through life.  In some parts of it, flowers are scattered, with
+profusion, the road is smooth, and the prospect pleasant: but in others
+(and I fear the greater number) the road is rugged, beset with thorns and
+briars, and cut by torrents.  Gather the flowers in your way; but, at the
+same time, guard against the briars that are either mixed with them, or
+that most certainly succeed them.
+
+I thank you for your wild boar; who, now he is dead, I assure him, 'se
+laissera bien manger malgre qu'il en ait'; though I am not so sure that I
+should have had that personal valor which so successfully distinguished
+you in single combat with him, which made him bite the dust like Homer's
+heroes, and, to conclude my period sublimely, put him into that PICKLE,
+from which I propose eating him.  At the same time that I applaud your
+valor, I must do justice to your modesty; which candidly admits that you
+were not overmatched, and that your adversary was about your own age and
+size.  A Maracassin, being under a year old, would have been below your
+indignation.  'Bete de compagne', being under two years old, was still,
+in my opinion, below your glory; but I guess that your enemy was 'un
+Ragot', that is, from two to three years old; an age and size which,
+between man and boar, answer pretty well to yours.
+
+If accidents of bad roads or waters do not detain you at Munich, I do not
+fancy that pleasures will: and I rather believe you will seek for, and
+find them, at the Carnival at Berlin; in which supposition, I eventually
+direct this letter to your banker there.  While you are at Berlin (I
+earnestly recommend it to you again and again) pray CARE to see, hear,
+know, and mind, everything there.  THE ABLEST PRINCE IN EUROPE is surely
+an object that deserves attention; and the least thing that he does, like
+the smallest sketches of the greatest painters, has its value, and a
+considerable one too.
+
+Read with care the Code Frederick, and inform yourself of the good
+effects of it in those parts of, his dominions where it has taken place,
+and where it has banished the former chicanes, quirks, and quibbles of
+the old law.  Do not think any detail too minute or trifling for your
+inquiry and observation.  I wish that you could find one hour's leisure
+every day, to read some good Italian author, and to converse in that
+language with our worthy friend Signor Angelo Cori; it would both refresh
+and improve your Italian, which, of the many languages you know, I take
+to be that in which you are the least perfect; but of which, too, you
+already know enough to make yourself master of, with very little trouble,
+whenever you please.
+
+Live, dwell, and grow at the several courts there; use them so much to
+your face, that they may not look upon you as a stranger.  Observe, and
+take their 'ton', even to their affectations and follies; for such there
+are, and perhaps should be, at all courts.  Stay, in all events, at
+Berlin, till I inform you of Sir Charles Williams's arrival at Dresden;
+where I suppose you would not care to be before him, and where you may go
+as soon after him as ever you please.  Your time there will neither be
+unprofitably nor disagreeably spent; he will introduce you into all the
+best company, though he can introduce you to none so good as his own.  He
+has of late applied himself very seriously to foreign affairs, especially
+those of Saxony and Poland; he knows them perfectly well, and will tell
+you what he knows.  He always expresses, and I have good reason to
+believe very sincerely, great kindness and affection for you.
+
+The works of the late Lord Bolingbroke are just published, and have
+plunged me into philosophical studies; which hitherto I have not been
+much used to, or delighted with; convinced of the futility of those
+researches; but I have read his " Philosophical Essay" upon the extent of
+human knowledge, which, by the way, makes two large quartos and a half.
+He there shows very clearly, and with most splendid eloquence, what the
+human mind can and cannot do; that our understandings are wisely
+calculated for our place in this planet, and for the link which we form
+in the universal chain of things; but that they are by no means capable
+of that degree of knowledge, which our curiosity makes us search after,
+and which our vanity makes us often believe we arrive at.  I shall not
+recommend to you the reading of that work; but, when you return hither,
+I shall recommend to your frequent and diligent perusal all his tracts
+that are relative to our history and constitution; upon which he throws
+lights, and scatters graces, which no other writer has ever done.
+
+Reading, which was always a pleasure to me, in the time even of my
+greatest dissipation, is now become my only refuge; and, I fear, I
+indulge it too much at the expense of my eyes.  But what can I do?
+I must do something; I cannot bear absolute idleness; my ears grow every
+day more useless to me, my eyes consequently more necessary ; I will not
+hoard them like a miser, but will rather risk the loss, than not enjoy
+the use of them.
+
+Pray let me know all the particulars, not only of your reception at
+Munich, but also at Berlin; at the latter, I believe, it will be a good
+one; for his Prussian Majesty knows, that I have long been AN ADMIRER AND
+RESPECTER OF HIS GREAT AND VARIOUS TALENTS.  Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXCIV
+
+LONDON, February 1, 1754
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: I received, yesterday, yours of the 12th, from Munich; in
+consequence of which, I direct this to you there, though I directed my
+three last to Berlin, where I suppose you will find them at your arrival.
+Since you are not only domesticated, but 'niche' at Munich, you are much
+in the right to stay there.  It is not by seeing places that one knows
+them, but by familiar and daily conversations with the people of fashion.
+I would not care to be in the place of that prodigy of beauty, whom you
+are to drive 'dans la course de Traineaux'; and I am apt to think you are
+much more likely to break her bones, than she is, though ever so cruel,
+to break your heart.  Nay, I am not sure but that, according to all the
+rules of gallantry, you are obliged to overturn her on purpose; in the
+first place, for the chance of seeing her backside; in the next, for the
+sake of the contrition and concern which it would give you an opportunity
+of showing; and, lastly, upon account of all the 'gentillesses et
+epigrammes', which it would naturally suggest.  Voiture has made several
+stanzas upon an accident of that kind, which happened to a lady of his
+acquaintance.  There is a great deal of wit in them, rather too much;
+for, according to the taste of those times, they are full of what the
+Italians call 'concetti spiritosissimi'; the Spaniards 'agudeze'; and we,
+affectation and quaintness.  I hope you have endeavored to suit your
+'Traineau' to the character of the fair-one whom it is to contain.  If
+she is of an irascible, impetuous disposition (as fine women can
+sometimes be), you will doubtless place her in the body of a lion, a
+tiger, a dragon, or some tremendous beast of prey and fury; if she is a
+sublime and stately beauty, which I think more probable (for
+unquestionably she is 'hogh gebohrne'), you will, I suppose, provide a
+magnificent swan or proud peacock for her reception; but if she is all
+tenderness and softness, you have, to be sure, taken care amorous doves
+and wanton sparrows should seem to flutter round her.  Proper mottos, I
+take it for granted, that you have eventually prepared ; but if not, you
+may find a great many ready-made ones in 'Les Entretiens d'Ariste et
+d'Eugene, sur les Devises', written by Pere Bouhours, and worth your
+reading at any time.  I will not say to you, upon this occasion, like the
+father in Ovid,
+
+          "Parce, puer, stimulis, et fortius utere loris."
+
+On the contrary, drive on briskly ; it is not the chariot of the sun that
+you drive, but you carry the sun in your chariot; consequently, the
+faster it goes, the less it will be likely to scorch or consume.  This is
+Spanish enough, I am sure.
+
+If this finds you still at Munich, pray make many compliments from me to
+Mr. Burrish, to whom I am very much obliged for all his kindness to you;
+it is true, that while I had power I endeavored to serve him; but it is
+as true too, that I served many others more, who have neither returned
+nor remembered those services.
+
+I have been very ill this last fortnight, of your old Carniolian
+complaint, the 'arthritis vaga'; luckily, it did not fall upon my breast,
+but seized on my right arm; there it fixed its seat of empire; but, as in
+all tyrannical governments, the remotest parts felt their share of its
+severity.  Last post I was not able to hold a pen long enough to write to
+you, and therefore desired Mr. Grevenkop to do it for me; but that letter
+was directed to Berlin.  My pain is now much abated, though I have still
+some fine remains of it in my shoulder, where I fear it will tease me a
+great while.  I must be careful to take Horace's advice, and consider
+well, 'Quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent'.
+
+Lady Chesterfield bids me make you her compliments, and assure you that
+the music will be much more welcome to her with you, than without you.
+
+In some of my last letters, which were directed to, and will, I suppose,
+wait for you at Berlin, I complimented you, and with justice, upon your
+great improvement of late in the epistolary way, both with regard to the
+style and the turn of your letters; your four or five last to me have
+been very good ones, and one that you wrote to Mr. Harte, upon the new
+year, was so pretty a one, and he was so much and so justly pleased with
+it, that he sent it me from Windsor the instant he had read it.  This
+talent (and a most necessary one it is in the course of life) is to be
+acquired by resolving, and taking pains to acquire it; and, indeed, so is
+every talent except poetry, which is undoubtedly a gift.  Think,
+therefore, night and day, of the turn, the purity, the correctness, the
+perspicuity, and the elegance of whatever you speak or write; take my
+word for it, your labor will not be in vain, but greatly rewarded by tho
+harvest of praise and success which it will bring you.  Delicacy of turn,
+and elegance of style, are ornaments as necessary to common sense, as
+attentions, address, and fashionable manners, are to common civility;
+both may subsist without them,  but then, without being of the least use
+to the owner.  The figure of a man is exactly the same in dirty rags, or
+in the finest and best chosen clothes; but in which of the two he is the
+most likely to please, and to be received in good company, I leave to you
+to determine.
+
+Both my arm and my paper hint to me, to bid you good-night.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXCV
+
+LONDON, February 12, 1754.
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: I take my aim, and let off this letter at you at Berlin;
+I should be sorry it missed you, because I believe you will read it with
+as much pleasure as I write it.  It is to inform you, that, after some
+difficulties and dangers, your seat in the new parliament is at last
+absolutely secured, and that without opposition, or the least necessity
+of your personal trouble or appearance.  This success, I must further
+inform you, is in a great degree owing to Mr. Eliot's friendship to us
+both; for he brings you in with himself at his surest borough.  As it was
+impossible to act with more zeal and friendship than Mr. Eliot has acted
+in this whole affair, I desire that you will, by the very next post,
+write him a letter of thanks, warm and young thanks, not old and cold
+ones.  You may inclose it in yours to me, and, I will send it to him, for
+he is now in Cornwall.
+
+Thus, sure of being a senator, I dare say you do not propose to be one of
+the 'pedarii senatores, et pedibus ire in sententiam; for, as the House
+of Commons is the theatre where you must make your fortune and figure in
+the world, you must resolve to be an actor, and not a 'persona muta',
+which is just equivalent to a candle snuffer upon other theatres.
+Whoever does not shine there, is obscure, insignificant and contemptible;
+and you cannot conceive how easy it is for a man of half your sense and
+knowledge to shine there if he pleases.  The receipt to make a speaker,
+and an applauded one too, is short and easy.--Take of common sense
+'quantum sufcit', add a little application to the rules and orders of the
+House, throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with
+a large quantity of purity, correctness, and elegance of style.  Take it
+for granted, that by far the greatest part of mankind do neither analyze
+nor search to the bottom; they are incapable of penetrating deeper than
+the surface.  All have senses to be gratified, very few have reason to be
+applied to.  Graceful utterance and action please their eyes, elegant
+diction tickles their ears; but strong reason would be thrown away upon
+them.  I am not only persuaded by theory, but convinced by my experience,
+that (supposing a certain degree of common sense) what is called a good
+speaker is as much a mechanic as a good shoemaker; and that the two
+trades are equally to be learned by the same degree of application.
+Therefore, for God's sake, let this trade be the principal object of your
+thoughts; never lose sight of it.  Attend minutely to your style,
+whatever language you speak or write in; seek for the best words, and
+think of the best turns.  Whenever you doubt of the propriety or elegance
+of any word, search the dictionary or some good author for it, or inquire
+of somebody, who is master of that language; and, in a little time,
+propriety and elegance of diction will become so habitual to you, that
+they will cost you no more trouble.  As I have laid this down to be
+mechanical and attainable by whoever will take the necessary pains, there
+will be no great vanity in my saying, that I saw the importance of the
+object so early, and attended to it so young, that it would now cost me
+more trouble to speak or write ungrammatically, vulgarly, and
+inelegantly, than ever it did to avoid doing so.  The late Lord
+Bolingbroke, without the least trouble, talked all day long, full as
+elegantly as he wrote.  Why?  Not by a peculiar gift from heaven; but,
+as he has often told me himself, by an early and constant attention to
+his style.  The present Solicitor-General, Murray, --[Created Lord
+Mansfield in the year 1756.]-- has less law than many lawyers, but has
+more practice than any; merely upon account of his eloquence, of which he
+has a never-failing stream.  I remember so long ago as when I was at
+Cambridge, whenever I read pieces of eloquence (and indeed they were my
+chief study) whether ancient or modern, I used to write down the shining
+passages, and then translate them, as well and as elegantly as ever I
+could; if Latin or French, into English; if English, into French.  This,
+which I practiced for some years, not only improved and formed my style,
+but imprinted in my mind and memory the best thoughts of the best
+authors.  The trouble was little, but the advantage I have experienced
+was great.  While you are abroad, you can neither have time nor
+opportunity to read pieces of English or parliamentary eloquence,
+as I hope you will carefully do when you return; but, in the meantime,
+whenever pieces of French eloquence come in your way, such as the
+speeches of persons received into the Academy, 'orasions funebres',
+representations of the several parliaments to the King, etc., read them
+in that view, in that spirit; observe the harmony, the turn and elegance
+of the style; examine in what you think it might have been better; and
+consider in what, had you written it yourself; you might have done worse.
+Compare the different manners of expressing the same thoughts in
+different authors; and observe how differently the same things appear in
+different dresses.  Vulgar, coarse, and ill-chosen words, will deform and
+degrade the best thoughts as much as rags and dirt will the best figure.
+In short, you now know your object; pursue it steadily, and have no
+digressions that are not relative to, and connected with, the main
+action.  Your success in parliament will effectually remove all OTHER
+OBJECTIONS; either a foreign or a domestic destination will no longer be
+refused you, if you make your way to it through Westminster.
+
+I think I may now say, that I am quite recovered from my late illness,
+strength and spirits excepted, which are not yet restored.  Aix-la-
+Chapelle and Spa will, I believe, answer all my purposes.
+
+I long to hear an account of your reception at Berlin, which I fancy will
+be a most gracious one.  Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXCVI
+
+LONDON, February 15, 1754
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: I can now with great truth apply your own motto to you,
+'Nullum numen abest, si sit Prudentia'.  You are sure of being, as early
+as your age will permit, a member of that House; which is the only road
+to figure and fortune in this country.  Those, indeed, who are bred up
+to, and distinguish themselves in particular professions, as the army,
+the navy, and the law, may, by their own merit, raise themselves to a
+certain degree; but you may observe too, that they never get to the top,
+without the assistance of parliamentary talents and influence.  The means
+of distinguishing yourself in parliament are, as I told you in my last,
+much more easily attained than I believe you imagine.  Close attendance
+to the business of the House will soon give you the parliamentary
+routine; and strict attention to your style will soon make you, not only
+a speaker, but a good one.  The vulgar look upon a man, who is reckoned a
+fine speaker, as a phenomenon, a supernatural being, and endowed with
+some peculiar gift of heaven; they stare at him, if he walks in the Park,
+and cry, THAT IS HE.  You will, I am sure, view him in a juster light,
+and 'nulla formidine'.  You will consider him only as a man of good
+sense, who adorns common thoughts with the graces of elocution, and the
+elegance of style.  The miracle will then cease; and you will be
+convinced, that with the same application, and attention to the same
+objects, you may most certainly equal, and perhaps surpass, this prodigy.
+Sir W---- Y-------, with not a quarter of your parts, and not a
+thousandth part of your knowledge, has, by a glibness of tongue simply,
+raised him successively to the best employments of the kingdom; he has
+been Lord of the Admiralty, Lord of the Treasury, Secretary at War, and
+is now Vice-Treasurer of Ireland; and all this with a most sullied, not
+to say blasted character.  Represent the thing to yourself, as it really
+is, easily attainable, and you will find it so.  Have but ambition enough
+passionately to desire the object, and spirit enough to use the means,
+and I will be answerable for your success.  When I was younger than you
+are, I resolved within myself that I would in all events be a speaker in
+parliament, and a good one too, if I could.  I consequently never lost
+sight of that object, and never neglected any of the means that I thought
+led to it.  I succeeded to a certain degree; and, I assure you, with
+great ease, and without superior talents.  Young people are very apt to
+overrate both men and things, from not being enough acquainted with them.
+In proportion as you come to know them better, you will value them less.
+You will find that reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom
+does; but that passions and weaknesses commonly usurp its seat, and rule
+in its stead.  You will find that the ablest have their weak sides too,
+and are only comparatively able, with regard to the still weaker herd:
+having fewer weaknesses themselves, they are able to avail themselves of
+the innumerable ones of the generality of mankind: being more masters of
+themselves, they become more easily masters of others.  They address
+themselves to their weaknesses, their senses, their passions; never to
+their reason; and consequently seldom fail of success.  But then analyze
+those great, those governing, and, as the vulgar imagine, those perfect
+characters, and you will find the great Brutus a thief in Macedonia, the
+great Cardinal Richelieu a jealous poetaster, and the great Duke of
+Marlborough a miser.  Till you come to know mankind by your own
+experience, I know no thing, nor no man, that can in the meantime bring
+you so well acquainted with them as le Duc de la Rochefoucault: his
+little book of "Maxims," which I would advise you to look into, for some
+moments at least, every day of your life, is, I fear, too like, and too
+exact a picture of human nature.
+
+I own, it seems to degrade it; but yet my experience does not convince me
+that it degrades it unjustly.
+
+Now, to bring all this home to my first point.  All these considerations
+should not only invite you to attempt to make a figure in parliament, but
+encourage you to hope that you shall succeed.  To govern mankind, one
+must not overrate them: and to please an audience, as a speaker, one must
+not overvalue it.  When I first came into the House of Commons, I
+respected that assembly as a venerable one; and felt a certain awe upon
+me, but, upon better acquaintance, that awe soon vanished; and I
+discovered, that, of the five hundred and sixty, not above thirty could
+understand reason, and that all the rest were 'peuple'; that those thirty
+only required plain common sense, dressed up in good language; and that
+all the others only required flowing and harmonious periods, whether they
+conveyed any meaning or not; having ears to hear, but not sense enough to
+judge.  These considerations made me speak with little concern the first
+time, with less the second, and with none at all the third.  I gave
+myself no further trouble about anything, except my elocution, and my
+style; presuming, without much vanity, that I had common sense sufficient
+not to talk nonsense.  Fix these three truths strongly in your mind:
+First, that it is absolutely necessary for you to speak in parliament;
+secondly, that it only requires a little human attention, and no
+supernatural gifts; and, thirdly, that you have all the reason in the
+world to think that you shall speak well.  When we meet, this shall be
+the principal subject of our conversations; and, if you will follow my
+advice, I will answer for your success.
+
+Now from great things to little ones; the transition is to me easy,
+because nothing seems little to me that can be of any use to you.  I hope
+you take great care of your mouth and teeth, and that you clean them well
+every morning with a sponge and tepid water, with a few drops of
+arquebusade water dropped into it; besides washing your mouth carefully
+after every meal, I do insist upon your never using those sticks, or any
+hard substance whatsoever, which always rub away the gums, and destroy
+the varnish of the teeth.  I speak this from woeful experience; for my
+negligence of my teeth, when I was younger than you are, made them bad;
+and afterward, my desire to have them look better, made me use sticks,
+irons, etc., which totally destroyed them; so that I have not now above
+six or seven left.  I lost one this morning, which suggested this advice
+to you.
+
+I have received the tremendous wild boar, which your still more
+tremendous arm slew in the immense deserts of the Palatinate; but have
+not yet tasted of it, as it is hitherto above my low regimen.  The late
+King of Prussia, whenever he killed any number of wild boars, used to
+oblige the Jews to buy them, at a high price, though they could eat none
+of them; so they defrayed the expense of his hunting.  His son has juster
+rules of government, as the Code Frederick plainly shows.
+
+I hope, that, by this time, you are as well 'ancre' at Berlin as you was
+at Munich; but, if not, you are sure of being so at Dresden.  Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXCVII
+
+LONDON, February 26, 1754.
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND:  I have received your letters of the 4th, from Munich,
+and of the 11th from Ratisbon ; but I have not received that of the 31st
+January, to which you refer in the former.  It is to this negligence and
+uncertainty of the post, that you owe your accidents  between Munich and
+Ratisbon: for, had you received my letters regularly, you would have
+received one from me before you left Munich, in which I advised you to
+stay, since you were so well there.  But, at all events, you were in the
+wrong to set out from Munich in such weather and such roads; since you
+could never imagine that I had set my heart so much upon your going to
+Berlin, as to venture your being buried in the snow for it.  Upon the
+whole, considering all you are very well off.  You do very well, in my
+mind, to return to Munich, or at least to keep within the circle of
+Munich, Ratisbon, and Manheim, till the weather and the roads are good:
+stay at each or any of those places as long as ever you please; for I am
+extremely indifferent about your going to Berlin.
+
+As to our meeting, I will tell you my plan, and you may form your own
+accordingly.  I propose setting out from hence the last week in April,
+then drinking the Aix-la-Chapelle waters for a week, and from thence
+being at Spa about the 15th of May, where I shall stay two months at
+most, and then return straight to England.  As I both hope and believe
+that there will be no mortal at Spa during my residence there, the
+fashionable season not beginning till the middle of July, I would by no
+means have you come there at first, to be locked up with me and some few
+Capucins, for two months, in that miserable hole; but I would advise you
+to stay where you like best, till about the first week in July, and then
+to come and pick me up at Spa, or meet me upon the road at Liege or
+Brussels.  As for the intermediate time, should you be weary of Manheim
+and Munich, you may, if you please, go to Dresden, to Sir Charles
+Williams, who will be there before that time; or you may come for a month
+or six weeks to The Hague; or, in short, go or stay wherever you like
+best.  So much for your motions.
+
+As you have sent for all the letters directed to you at Berlin, you will
+receive from thence volumes of mine, among which you will easily perceive
+that some were calculated for a supposed perusal previous to your opening
+them.  I will not repeat anything contained in them, excepting that I
+desire you will send me a warm and cordial letter of thanks for Mr.
+Eliot; who has, in the most friendly manner imaginable, fixed you at his
+own borough of Liskeard, where you will be elected jointly with him,
+without the least opposition or difficulty.  I will forward that letter
+to him into Cornwall, where he now is.
+
+Now that you are to be soon a man of business, I heartily wish that you
+would immediately begin to be a man of method; nothing contributing more
+to facilitate and dispatch business, than method and order.  Have order
+and method in your accounts, in your reading, in the allotment of your
+time; in short, in everything.  You cannot conceive how much time you
+will save by it, nor how much better everything you do will be done.  The
+Duke of Marlborough did by no means spend, but he slatterned himself into
+that immense debt, which is not yet near paid off.  The hurry and
+confusion of the Duke of Newcastle do not proceed from his business, but
+from his want of method in it.  Sir Robert Walpole, who had ten times the
+business to do, was never seen in a hurry, because he always did it with
+method.  The head of a man who has business, and no method nor order, is
+properly that 'rudis indigestaque moles quam dixere chaos'.  As you must
+be conscious that you are extremely negligent and slatternly, I hope you
+will resolve not to be so for the future.  Prevail with yourself, only to
+observe good method and order for one fortnight; and I will venture to
+assure you that you will never neglect them afterward, you will find such
+conveniency and advantage arising from them.  Method is the great
+advantage that lawyers have over other people, in speaking in parliament;
+for, as they must necessarily observe it in their pleadings in the courts
+of justice, it becomes habitual to them everywhere else.  Without making
+you a compliment, I can tell you with pleasure, that order, method, and
+more activity of mind, are all that you want, to make, some day or other,
+a considerable figure in business.  You have more useful knowledge, more
+discernment of characters, and much more discretion, than is common at
+your age; much more, I am sure, than I had at that age.  Experience you
+cannot yet have, and therefore trust in the meantime to mine.  I am an
+old traveler; am well acquainted with all the bye as well as the great
+roads; I cannot misguide you from ignorance, and you are very sure I
+shall not from design.
+
+I can assure you, that you will have no opportunity of subscribing
+yourself my Excellency's, etc.  Retirement and quiet were my choice some
+years ago, while I had all my senses, and health and spirits enough to
+carry on business; but now that I have lost my hearing, and that I find
+my constitution declining daily, they are become my necessary and only
+refuge.  I know myself (no common piece of knowledge, let me tell you),
+I know what I can, what I cannot, and consequently what I ought to do.
+I ought not, and therefore will not, return to business when I am much
+less fit for it than I was when I quitted it.  Still less will I go to
+Ireland, where, from my deafness and infirmities, I must necessarily make
+a different figure from that which I once made there.  My pride would be
+too much mortified by that difference.  The two important senses of
+seeing and hearing should not only be good, but quick, in business; and
+the business of a Lord-lieutenant of Ireland (if he will do it himself)
+requires both those senses in the highest perfection.  It was the Duke of
+Dorset's not doing the business himself, but giving it up to favorites,
+that has occasioned all this confusion in Ireland; and it was my doing
+the whole myself, without either Favorite, Minister, or Mistress, that
+made my administration so smooth and quiet.  I remember, when I named the
+late Mr. Liddel for my Secretary, everybody was much surprised at it;
+and some of my friends represented to me, that he was no man of business,
+but only a very genteel, pretty young fellow; I assured them, and with
+truth, that that was the very reason why I chose him; for that I was
+resolved to do all the business myself, and without even the suspicion of
+having a minister; which the Lord-lieutenant's Secretary, if he is a man
+of business, is always supposed, and commonly with reason, to be.
+Moreover, I look upon myself now to be emeritus in business, in which I
+have been near forty years together; I give it up to you: apply yourself
+to it, as I have done, for forty years, and then I consent to your
+leaving it for a philosophical retirement among your friends and your
+books.  Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations
+of their decay; and, too often sanguinely hoping to shine on in their
+meridian, often set with contempt and ridicule.  I retired in time, 'uti
+conviva satur'; or, as Pope says still better, ERE TITTERING YOUTH SHALL
+SHOVE YOU FROM THE STAGE.  My only remaining ambition is to be the
+counsellor and minister of your rising ambition.  Let me see my own youth
+revived in you; let me be your Mentor, and, with your parts and
+knowledge, I promise you, you shall go far.  You must bring, on your
+part, activity and attention; and I will point out to you the proper
+objects for them.  I own I fear but one thing for you, and that is what
+one has generally the least reason to fear from one of your age; I mean
+your laziness; which, if you indulge, will make you stagnate in a
+contemptible obscurity all your life.  It will hinder you from doing
+anything that will deserve to be written, or from writing anything that
+may deserve to be read; and yet one or other of those two objects should
+be at least aimed at by every rational being.
+
+I look upon indolence as a sort of SUICIDE; for the man is effectually
+destroyed, though the appetites of the brute may survive.  Business by no
+means forbids pleasures; on the contrary, they reciprocally season each
+other; and I will venture to affirm, that no man enjoys either in
+perfection, that does not join both.  They whet the desire for each
+other.  Use yourself, therefore, in time to be alert and diligent in your
+little concerns; never procrastinate, never put off till to-morrow what
+you can do to-day; and never do two things at a time; pursue your object,
+be it what it will, steadily and indefatigably; and let any difficulties
+(if surmountable) rather animate than slacken your endeavors.
+Perseverance has surprising effects.
+
+I wish you would use yourself to translate, every day, only three or four
+lines, from any book, in any language, into the correctest and most
+elegant English that you can think of; you cannot imagine how it will
+insensibly form your style, and give you an habitual elegance; it would
+not take you up a quarter of an hour in a day.  This letter is so long,
+that it will hardly leave you that quarter of an hour, the day you
+receive it.  So good-night.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXCVIII
+
+LONDON, March 8, 1754
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: A great and unexpected event has lately happened in our
+ministerial world.  Mr. Pelham died last Monday of a fever and
+mortification, occasioned by a general corruption of his whole mass of
+blood, which had broke out into sores in his back.  I regret him as an
+old acquaintance, a pretty near relation, and a private man, with whom I
+have lived many years in a social and friendly way.  He meant well to the
+public; and was incorrupt in a post where corruption is commonly
+contagious.  If he was no shining, enterprising minister, he was a safe
+one, which I like better.  Very shining ministers, like the sun, are apt
+to scorch when they shine the brightest: in our constitution, I prefer
+the milder light of a less glaring minister.  His successor is not yet,
+at least publicly, 'designatus'.  You will easily suppose that many are
+very willing, and very few able, to fill that post.  Various persons are
+talked of, by different people, for it, according as their interest
+prompts them to wish, or their ignorance to conjecture.  Mr. Fox is the
+most talked of; he is strongly supported by the Duke of Cumberland.  Mr.
+Legge, the Solicitor-General, and Dr. Lee, are likewise all spoken of,
+upon the foot of the Duke of Newcastle's, and the Chancellor's interest.
+Should it be any one of the last three, I think no great alterations will
+ensue; but should Mr. Fox prevail, it would, in my opinion, soon produce
+changes by no means favorable to the Duke of Newcastle.  In the meantime,
+the wild conjectures of volunteer politicians, and the ridiculous
+importance which, upon these occasions, blockheads always endeavor to
+give themselves, by grave looks, significant shrugs, and insignificant
+whispers, are very entertaining to a bystander, as, thank God, I now am.
+One KNOWS SOMETHING, but is not yet at liberty to tell it; another has
+heard something from a very good hand; a third congratulates himself upon
+a certain degree of intimacy, which he has long had with everyone of the
+candidates, though perhaps he has never spoken twice to anyone of them.
+In short, in these sort of intervals, vanity, interest, and absurdity,
+always display themselves in the most ridiculous light.  One who has been
+so long behind the scenes as I have is much more diverted with the
+entertainment, than those can be who only see it from the pit and boxes.
+I know the whole machinery of the interior, and can laugh the better at
+the silly wonder and wild conjectures of the uninformed spectators.
+This accident, I think, cannot in the least affect your election, which
+is finally settled with your friend Mr. Eliot.  For, let who will
+prevail, I presume, he will consider me enough, not to overturn an
+arrangement of that sort, in which he cannot possibly be personally
+interested.  So pray go on with your parliamentary preparations.  Have
+that object always in your view, and pursue it with attention.
+
+I take it for granted that your late residence in Germany has made you as
+perfect and correct in German, as you were before in French, at least it
+is worth your while to be so; because it is worth every man's while to be
+perfectly master of whatever language he may ever have occasion to speak.
+A man is not himself, in a language which he does not thoroughly possess;
+his thoughts are degraded, when inelegantly or imperfectly expressed; he
+is cramped and confined, and consequently can never appear to advantage.
+Examine and analyze those thoughts that strike you the most, either in
+conversation or in books; and you will find that they owe at least half
+their merit to the turn and expression of them.  There is nothing truer
+than that old saying, 'Nihil dictum quod non prins dictum'.  It is only
+the manner of saying or writing it that makes it appear new.  Convince
+yourself that manner is almost everything, in everything; and study it
+accordingly.
+
+I am this moment informed, and I believe truly, that Mr. Fox --[Henry
+Fox, created Lord Holland, Baron of Foxley, in the year 1763]-- is to
+succeed Mr. Pelham as First Commissioner of the Treasury and Chancellor
+of the Exchequer; and your friend, Mr. Yorke, of The Hague, to succeed
+Mr. Fox as Secretary at War.  I am not sorry for this promotion of Mr.
+Fox, as I have always been upon civil terms with him, and found him ready
+to do me any little services.  He is frank and gentleman-like in his
+manner: and, to a certain degree, I really believe will be your friend
+upon my account; if you can afterward make him yours, upon your own, 'tan
+mieux'.  I have nothing more to say now but Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXCIX
+
+LONDON, March 15, 1754
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: We are here in the midst of a second winter; the cold is
+more severe, and the snow deeper, than they were in the first.
+I presume, your weather in Germany is not much more gentle and,
+therefore, I hope that you are quietly and warmly fixed at some good
+town: and will not risk a second burial in the snow, after your late
+fortunate resurrection out of it.  Your letters, I suppose, have not been
+able to make their way through the ice; for I have received none from you
+since that of the 12th of February, from Ratisbon.  I am the more uneasy
+at this state of ignorance, because I fear that you may have found some
+subsequent inconveniences from your overturn, which you might not be
+aware of at first.
+
+The curtain of the political theatre was partly drawn up the day before
+yesterday, and exhibited a scene which the public in general did not
+expect; the Duke of Newcastle was declared First Lord Commissioner of the
+Treasury, Mr. Fox Secretary of State in his room, and Mr. Henry Legge
+Chancellor of the Exchequer:  The employments of Treasurer of the Navy,
+and Secretary at War, supposed to be vacant by the promotion of Mr. Fox
+and Mr. Legge, were to be kept 'in petto' till the dissolution of this
+parliament, which will probably be next week, to avoid the expense and
+trouble of unnecessary re-elections; but it was generally supposed that
+Colonel Yorke, of The Hague, was to succeed Mr. Fox; and George
+Greenville, Mr. Legge.  This scheme, had it taken place, you are, I
+believe aware, was more a temporary expedient, for securing the elections
+of the new parliament, and forming it, at its first meeting, to the
+interests and the inclinations of the Duke of Newcastle and the
+Chancellor, than a plan of administration either intended or wished to be
+permanent.  This scheme was disturbed yesterday: Mr. Fox, who had
+sullenly accepted the seals the day before, more sullenly refused them
+yesterday.  His object was to be First Commissioner of the Treasury, and
+Chancellor of the Exchequer, and consequently to have a share in the
+election of the new parliament, and a much greater in the management of
+it when chosen.  This necessary consequence of his view defeated it; and
+the Duke of Newcastle and the Chancellor chose to kick him upstairs into
+the Secretaryship of State, rather than trust him with either the
+election or the management of the new parliament.  In this, considering
+their respective situations, they certainly acted wisely; but whether Mr.
+Fox has done so, or not, in refusing the seals, is a point which I cannot
+determine.  If he is, as I presume he is, animated with revenge, and I
+believe would not be over scrupulous in the means of gratifying it, I
+should have thought he could have done it better, as Secretary of State,
+with constant admission into the closet, than as a private man at the
+head of an opposition.  But I see all these things at too great a
+distance to be able to judge soundly of them.  The true springs and
+motives of political measures are confined within a very narrow circle,
+and known to a very few; the good reasons alleged are seldom the true
+ones: The public commonly judges, or rather guesses, wrong, and I am now
+one of that public.  I therefore recommend to you a prudent Pyrrhonism in
+all matters of state, until you become one of the wheels of them
+yourself, and consequently acquainted with the general motion, at least,
+of the others; for as to all the minute and secret springs, that
+contribute more or less to the whole machine, no man living ever knows
+them all, not even he who has the principal direction of it.  As in the
+human body, there are innumerable little vessels and glands that have a
+good deal to do, and yet escape the knowledge of the most skillful
+anatomist; he will know more, indeed, than those who only see the
+exterior of our bodies, but he will never know all.  This bustle, and
+these changes at court, far from having disturbed the quiet and security
+of your election, have, if possible, rather confirmed them; for the Duke
+of Newcastle (I must do him justice) has, in, the kindest manner
+imaginable to you, wrote a letter to Mr. Eliot, to recommend to him the
+utmost care of your election.
+
+Though the plan of administration is thus unsettled, mine, for my travels
+this summer, is finally settled; and I now communicate it to you that you
+may form your own upon it.  I propose being at Spa on the l0th or l2th of
+May, and staying there till the l0th of July.  As there will be no mortal
+there during my stay, it would be both unpleasant and unprofitable to you
+to be shut up tete-a-fete with me the whole time; I should therefore
+think it best for you not to come to me there till the last week in June.
+In the meantime, I suppose, that by the middle of April, you will think
+that you have had enough of Manheim, Munich, or Ratisbon, and that
+district.  Where would you choose to go then?  For I leave you absolutely
+your choice.  Would you go to Dresden for a month or six weeks?  That is
+a good deal out of your way, and I am not sure that Sir Charles will be
+there by that time.  Or would you rather take Bonn in your way, and pass
+the time till we meet at The Hague?  From Manheim you may have a great
+many good letters of recommendation to the court of Bonn; which court,
+and it's Elector, in one light or another, are worth your seeing.
+
+From thence, your journey to The Hague will be but a short one; and you
+would arrive there at that season of the year when The Hague is, in my
+mind, the most agreeable, smiling scene in Europe; and from The Hague you
+would have but three very easy days journey to me at Spa.  Do as you
+like; for, as I told you before, 'Ella e assolutamente padrone'.  But
+lest you should answer that you desire to be determined by me, I will
+eventually tell you my opinion.  I am rather inclined to the latter plan;
+I mean that of your coming to Bonn, staying there according as you like
+it, and then passing the remainder of your time, that is May and June, at
+The Hague.  Our connection and transactions with the, Republic of the
+United Provinces are such, that you cannot be too well acquainted with
+that constitution, and with those people.  You have established good
+acquaintances there, and you have been 'fetoie' round by the foreign
+ministers; so that you will be there 'en pais connu'.  Moreover, you have
+not seen the Stadtholder, the 'Gouvernante', nor the court there, which
+'a bon compte' should be seen.  Upon the whole, then, you cannot, in my
+opinion, pass the months of May and June more agreeably, or more
+usefully, than at The Hague.  But, however, if you have any other, plan
+that you like better, pursue it:  Only let me know what you intend to do,
+and I shall most cheerfully agree to it.
+
+The parliament will be dissolved in about ten days, and the writs for the
+election of the new one issued out immediately afterward; so that, by the
+end of next month, you may depend upon being 'Membre de la chambre
+basse'; a title that sounds high in foreign countries, and perhaps higher
+than it deserves.  I hope you will add a better title to it in your own,
+I mean that of a good speaker in parliament: you have, I am sure, all,
+the materials necessary for it, if you will but put them together and
+adorn them.  I spoke in parliament the first month I was in it, and a
+month before I was of age; and from the day I was elected, till the day
+that I spoke.  I am sure I thought nor dreamed of nothing but speaking.
+The first time, to say the truth, I spoke very indifferently as to the
+matter; but it passed tolerably, in favor of the spirit with which I
+uttered it, and the words in which I had dressed it.  I improved by
+degrees, till at last it did tolerably well.  The House, it must be
+owned, is always extremely indulgent to the two or three first attempts
+of a young speaker; and if they find any degree of common sense in what
+he says, they make great allowances for his inexperience, and for the
+concern which they suppose him to be under.  I experienced that
+indulgence; for had I not been a young member, I should certainly have
+been, as I own I deserved, reprimanded by the House for some strong and
+indiscreet things that I said.  Adieu!  It is indeed high time.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CC
+
+LONDON, March 26, 1754
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: Yesterday I received your letter of the 15th from
+Manheim, where I find you have been received in the usual gracious
+manner; which I hope you return in a GRACEFUL one.  As this is a season
+of great devotion and solemnity in all Catholic countries, pray inform
+yourself of, and constantly attend to, all their silly and pompous church
+ceremonies; one ought to know them.  I am very glad that you wrote the
+letter to Lord ------, which, in every different case that can possibly
+be supposed, was, I am sure, both a decent and a prudent step.  You will
+find it very difficult, whenever we meet, to convince me that you could
+have any good reasons for not doing it; for I will, for argument's sake,
+suppose, what I cannot in reality believe, that he has both said and done
+the worst he could, of and by you; What then?  How will you help
+yourself?  Are you in a situation to hurt him?  Certainly not; but he
+certainly is in a situation to hurt you.  Would you show a sullen,
+pouting, impotent resentment?  I hope not; leave that silly, unavailing
+sort of resentment to women, and men like them, who are always guided by
+humor, never by reason and prudence.  That pettish, pouting conduct is a
+great deal too young, and implies too little knowledge of the world, for
+one who has seen so much of it as you have.  Let this be one invariable
+rule of your conduct,-- Never to show the least symptom of resentment
+which you cannot to a certain degree gratify; but always to smile, where
+you cannot strike.  There would be no living in courts, nor indeed in the
+world if one could not conceal, and even dissemble, the just causes of
+resentment, which one meets with every day in active and busy life.
+Whoever cannot master his humor enough, 'pour faire bonne mine a mauvais
+jeu', should leave the world, and retire to some hermitage, in an
+unfrequented desert.  By showing an unavailing and sullen resentment, you
+authorize the resentment of those who can hurt you and whom you cannot
+hurt; and give them that very pretense, which perhaps they wished for, of
+breaking with, and injuring you; whereas the contrary behavior would lay
+them under, the restraints of decency at least; and either shackle or
+expose their malice.  Besides, captiousness, sullenness, and pouting are
+most exceedingly illiberal and vulgar.  'Un honnete homme ne les connoit
+point'.
+
+I am extremely glad to hear that you are soon to have Voltaire at
+Manheim: immediately upon his arrival, pray make him a thousand
+compliments from me.  I admire him most exceedingly; and, whether as an
+epic, dramatic, or lyric poet, or prose-writer, I think I justly apply to
+him the 'Nil molitur inepte'.  I long to read his own correct edition of
+'Les Annales de l'Empire', of which the 'Abrege Chronologique de
+l'Histoire Universelle', which I have read, is, I suppose, a stolen and
+imperfect part; however, imperfect as it is, it has explained to me that
+chaos of history, of seven hundred years more clearly than any other book
+had done before.  You judge very rightly that I love 'le style le r et
+fleuri'.  I do, and so does everybody who has any parts and taste.  It
+should, I confess, be more or less 'fleuri', according to the subject;
+but at the same time I assert that there is no subject that may not
+properly, and which ought not to be adorned, by a certain elegance and
+beauty of style.  What can be more adorned than Cicero's Philosophical
+Works?  What more than Plato's?  It is their eloquence only that has
+preserved and transmitted them down to us through so many centuries;
+for the philosophy of them is wretched, and the reasoning part miserable.
+But eloquence will always please, and has always pleased.  Study it
+therefore; make it the object of your thoughts and attention.  Use
+yourself to relate elegantly; that is a good step toward speaking well in
+parliament.  Take some political subject, turn it in your thoughts,
+consider what may be said both for and against it, then put those
+arguments into writing, in the most correct and elegant English you can.
+For instance, a standing army, a place bill, etc.; as to the former,
+consider, on one side, the dangers arising to a free country from a great
+standing military force; on the other side, consider the necessity of a
+force to repel force with.  Examine whether a standing army, though in
+itself an evil, may not, from circumstances, become a necessary evil,
+and preventive of greater dangers.  As to the latter, consider, how far
+places may bias and warp the conduct of men, from the service of their
+country, into an unwarrantable complaisance to the court; and, on the
+other hand, consider whether they can be supposed to have that effect
+upon the conduct of people of probity and property, who are more solidly
+interested in the permanent good of their country, than they can be in an
+uncertain and precarious employment.  Seek for, and answer in your own
+mind, all the arguments that can be urged on either side, and write them
+down in an elegant style.  This will prepare you for debating, and give.
+you an habitual eloquence; for I would not give a farthing for a mere
+holiday eloquence, displayed once or twice in a session, in a set
+declamation, but I want an every-day, ready, and habitual eloquence, to
+adorn extempore and debating speeches; to make business not only clear
+but agreeable, and to please even those whom you cannot inform, and who
+do not desire to be informed.  All this you may acquire, and make
+habitual to you, with as little trouble as it cost you to dance a minuet
+as well as you do.  You now dance it mechanically and well without
+thinking of it.
+
+I am surprised that you found but one letter for me at Manheim, for you
+ought to have found four or five; there are as many lying for you at your
+banker's at Berlin, which I wish you had, because I always endeavored to
+put something into them, which, I hope, may be of use to you.
+
+When we meet at Spa, next July, we must have a great many serious
+conversations; in which I will pour out all my experience of the world,
+and which, I hope, you will trust to, more than to your own young notions
+of men and things.  You will, in time, discover most of them to have been
+erroneous; and, if you follow them long, you will perceive your error too
+late ; but if you will be led by a guide, who, you are sure, does not
+mean to mislead you, you will unite two things, seldom united, in the
+same person; the vivacity and spirit of youth, with the caution and
+experience of age.
+
+Last Saturday, Sir Thomas Robinson, who had been the King's Minister at
+Vienna, was declared Secretary of State for the southern department, Lord
+Holderness having taken the northern.  Sir Thomas accepted it
+unwillingly, and, as I hear, with a promise that he shall not keep it
+long.  Both his health and spirits are bad, two very disqualifying
+circumstances for that employment; yours, I hope, will enable you, some
+time or other, to go through with it.  In all events, aim at it, and if
+you fail or fall, let it at least be said of you, 'Magnis tamen excidit
+ausis'.  Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CCI
+
+LONDON, April 5, 1754
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: I received yesterday your letter of the 20th March, from
+Manheim, with the inclosed for Mr. Eliot; it was a very proper one, and I
+have forwarded it to him by Mr. Harte, who sets out for Cornwall tomorrow
+morning.
+
+I am very glad that you use yourself to translations; and I do not care
+of what, provided you study the correctness and elegance of your style.
+The "Life of Sextus Quintus" is the best book of the innumerable books
+written by Gregorio Leti, whom the Italians, very justly, call 'Leti caca
+libro'.  But I would rather that you chose some pieces of oratory for
+your translations, whether ancient or modern, Latin or French, which
+would give you a more oratorical train of thoughts and turn of
+expression.  In your letter to me you make use of two words, which though
+true and correct English, are, however, from long disuse, become
+inelegant, and seem now to be stiff, formal, and in some degree
+scriptural; the first is the word NAMELY, which you introduce thus, YOU
+INFORM ME OF A VERY AGREEABLE PIECE OF NEWS, namely, THAT MY ELECTION
+IS
+SECURED.  Instead of NAMELY, I would always use WHICH IS, or THAT IS,
+that my-election is secured.  The other word is, MINE OWN INCLINATIONS:
+this is certainly correct before a subsequent word that begins with a
+vowel; but it is too correct, and is now disused as too formal,
+notwithstanding the hiatus occasioned by MY OWN.  Every language has its
+peculiarities; they are established by usage, and whether right or wrong,
+they must be complied with.  I could instance many very absurd ones in
+different languages; but so authorized by the 'jus et norma loquendi',
+that they must be submitted to.  NAMELY, and TO WIT, are very good words
+in themselves, and contribute to clearness more than the relatives which
+we now substitute in their room; but, however, they cannot be used,
+except in a sermon or some very grave and formal compositions.  It is
+with language as with manners they are both established by the usage of
+people of fashion; it must be imitated, it must be complied with.
+Singularity is only pardonable in old age and retirement; I may now be as
+singular as I please, but you may not.  We will, when we meet, discuss
+these and many other points, provided you will give me attention and
+credit; without both which it is to no purpose to advise either you or
+anybody else.
+
+I want to know your determination, where you intend to (if I may use that
+expression) WHILE away your time till the last week in ,June, when we are
+to meet at Spa; I continue rather in the opinion which I mentioned to you
+formerly, in favor of The Hague; but however, I have not the least
+objection to Dresden, or to any other place that you may like better.
+If you prefer the Dutch scheme, you take Treves and Coblentz in your way,
+as also Dusseldorp: all which places I think you have not yet seen.  At
+Manheim you may certainly get good letters of recommendation to the
+courts of the two Electors of Treves and Cologne, whom you are yet
+unacquainted with; and I should wish you to know them all; for, as I have
+often told you, 'olim haec meminisse juvabit'.  There is an utility in
+having seen what other people have seen, and there is a justifiable pride
+in having seen what others have not seen.  In the former case, you are
+equal to others; in the latter, superior.  As your stay abroad will not
+now be very long, pray, while it lasts, see everything and everybody you
+can, and see them well, with care and attention.  It is not to be
+conceived of what advantage it is to anybody to have seen more things,
+people, and countries, than other people in general have; it gives them a
+credit, makes them referred to, and they become the objects of the
+attention of the company.  They are not out in any part of polite
+conversation; they are acquainted with all the places, customs, courts,
+and families that are likely to be mentioned; they are, as Monsieur de
+Maupertuis justly observes, 'de tous les pays, comme les savans, sont de
+tous les tems'.  You have, fortunately, both those advantages: the only
+remaining point is 'de savoir les faire valoir', for without that one may
+as well not have them.  Remember that very true maxim of La Bruyere's,
+'Qu'on ne vaut dans se monde que ce qu'on veut valoir'.  The knowledge of
+the world will teach you to what degree you ought to show 'que vous
+valez'.  One must by no means, on one hand, be indifferent about it; as,
+on the other, one must not display it with affectation, and in an
+overbearing manner, but, of the two, it is better to show too much than
+too little.  Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CCII
+
+BATH, November 27, 1754
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND : I heartily congratulate you upon the loss of your
+political maidenhead, of which I have received from others a very good
+account.  I hear that you were stopped for some time in your career; but
+recovered breath, and finished it very well.  I am not surprised, nor
+indeed concerned, at your accident; for I remember the dreadful feeling
+of that situation in myself; and as it must require a most uncommon share
+of impudence to be unconcerned upon such an occasion, I am not sure that
+I am not rather glad you stopped.  You must therefore now think of
+hardening yourself by degrees, by using yourself insensibly to the sound
+of your own voice, and to the act (trifling as it seems) of rising up and
+sitting down.  Nothing will contribute so much to this as committee work
+of elections at night, and of private bills in the morning.  There,
+asking short questions, moving for witnesses to be called in, and all
+that kind of small ware, will soon fit you to set up for yourself.  I am
+told that you are much mortified at your accident, but without reason;
+pray, let it rather be a spur than a curb to you.  Persevere, and, depend
+upon it, it will do well at last.  When I say persevere, I do not mean
+that you should speak every day, nor in every debate.  Moreover, I would
+not advise you to speak again upon public matters for some time, perhaps
+a month or two; but I mean, never lose view of that great object; pursue
+it with discretion, but pursue it always.  'Pelotez en attendant partie'.
+You know I have always told you that speaking in public was but a knack,
+which those who apply to the most will succeed in the best.  Two old
+members, very good judges, have sent me compliments upon this occasion;
+and have assured me that they plainly find it will do; though they
+perceived, from that natural confusion you were in, that you neither said
+all, nor perhaps what you intended.  Upon the whole, you have set out
+very well, and have sufficient encouragement to go on.  Attend;
+therefore, assiduously, and observe carefully all that passes in the
+House; for it is only knowledge and experience that can make a debater.
+But if you still want comfort, Mrs.------- I hope, will administer it to
+you; for, in my opinion she may, if she will, be very comfortable; and
+with women, as with speaking in parliament, perseverance will most
+certainly prevail sooner or later.
+
+What little I have played for here, I have won; but that is very far from
+the considerable sum which you heard of.  I play every evening, from
+seven till ten, at a crown whist party, merely to save my eyes from
+reading or writing for three hours by candle-light.  I propose being in
+town the week after next, and hope to carry back with me much more health
+than I brought down here.  Good-night.
+
+[Mr. Stanhope being returned to England, and seeing his father almost
+every day, is the occasion of an interruption of two years in their
+correspondence.]
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+According as their interest prompts them to wish . . . . . . . . . . .
+Acquainted with books, and an absolute stranger to men.. . . . . . . .
+Affectation of singularity or superiority. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+All have senses to be gratified. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Bolingbroke. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Business by no means forbids pleasures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Clamorers triumph. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Doing anything that will deserve to be written . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Ears to hear, but not sense enough to judge. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+ERE TITTERING YOUTH SHALL SHOVE YOU FROM THE STAGE . . . . . . . . . .
+Frederick. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Good manners are the settled medium of social life . . . . . . . . . .
+Good reasons alleged are seldom the true ones. . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Holiday eloquence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+I know myself (no common piece of knowledge, let me tell you). . . . .
+Indolence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+INTOLERATION in religious, and inhospitality in civil matters. . . . .
+Kick him upstairs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+King Louis XIV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Look upon indolence as a sort of SUICIDE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Manner is almost everything, in everything . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Many are very willing, and very few able . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Perseverance has surprising effects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Pettish, pouting conduct is a great deal too young . . . . . . . . . .
+Reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom does. . . . . . .
+Rendering Jews capable of being naturalized. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Rochefoucault. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Singularity is only pardonable in old age. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Smile, where you cannot strike . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+To govern mankind, one must not overrate them. . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Too like, and too exact a picture of human nature. . . . . . . . . . .
+Vanity, interest, and absurdity, always display. . . . . . . . . . . .
+Warm and young thanks, not old and cold ones . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Writing anything that may deserve to be read . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Young men are as apt to think themselves wise enough . . . . . . . . .
+Young people are very apt to overrate both men and things. . . . . . .
+
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Letters to His Son, 1753-54
+by The Earl of Chesterfield
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Letters to His Son, 1753-54
+#7 in our series by The Earl of Chesterfield
+
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+Title: Letters to His Son, 1753-54
+
+Author: The Earl of Chesterfield
+
+Release Date: August, 2002  [Etext #3357]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 03/09/01]
+[Last modified date = 11/24/01]
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+Edition: 11
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+Language: English
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext Chesterfield's Letters to His Son, 1753-54
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+
+
+                           LETTERS TO HIS SON
+                                1753-54
+
+                      By the EARL OF CHESTERFIELD
+
+                     on the Fine Art of becoming a
+
+                            MAN OF THE WORLD
+
+                                 and a
+
+                               GENTLEMAN
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CLXXXV
+
+LONDON, New Years' Day, 1753
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: It is now above a fortnight since I have received a
+letter from you.  I hope, however, that you are well, but engrossed by
+the business of Lord Albemarle's 'bureau' in the mornings, and by
+business of a genteeler nature in the evenings; for I willingly give up
+my own satisfaction to your improvement, either in business or manners.
+
+Here have been lately imported from Paris two gentlemen, who, I find,
+were much acquainted with you there Comte Zinzendorf, and Monsieur
+Clairant the Academician.  The former is a very pretty man, well-bred,
+and with a great deal of useful knowledge; for those two things are very
+consistent.  I examined him about you, thinking him a competent judge.
+He told me, 'que vous parliez l'Allemand comme un Allemand; que vous
+saviez le droit public de l'empire parfaitement bien; que vous aviez le
+gout sur, et des connoissances fort etendues'.  I told him that I knew
+all this very well; but that I wanted to know whether you had l'air, les
+manieres, les attentions, en fin le brillant d'un honnete homme': his
+answer was, 'Mais oui en verite, c'est fort bien'.  This, you see, is but
+cold in comparison of what I do wish, and of what you ought to wish.
+Your friend Clairant interposed, and said, 'Mais je vous assure qu'il est
+fort poli'; to which I answered, 'Je le crois bien, vis-a-vis des Lapons
+vos amis; je vous recuse pour juge, jusqu'a ce que vous ayez ete
+delaponne, au moins dix ans, parmi les honnetes gens'.  These testimonies
+in your favor are such as perhaps you are satisfied with, and think
+sufficient; but I am not; they are only the cold depositions of
+disinterested and unconcerned witnesses, upon a strict examination.
+When, upon a trial, a man calls witnesses to his character, and that
+those witnesses only say that they never heard, nor do not know any ill
+of him, it intimates at best a neutral and insignificant, though innocent
+character.  Now I want, and you ought to endeavor, that 'les agremens,
+les graces, les attentions', etc., should be a distinguishing part of your
+character, and specified of you by people unasked.  I wish to hear people
+say of you, 'Ah qu'il est aimable!  Quelles manieres, quelles graces,
+quel art de Claire'!  Nature, thank God, has given you all the powers
+necessary; and if she has not yet, I hope in God she will give you the
+will of exerting them.
+
+I have lately read with great pleasure Voltaire's two little histories of
+'Les Croisades', and 'l'Esprit Humain'; which I recommend to your
+perusal, if you have not already read them.  They are bound up with a
+most poor performance called 'Micromegas', which is said to be Voltaire's
+too, but I cannot believe it, it is so very unworthy of him; it consists
+only of thoughts stolen from Swift, but miserably mangled and disfigured.
+But his history of the 'Croisades' shows, in a very short and strong
+light, the most immoral and wicked scheme that was ever contrived by
+knaves, and executed by madmen and fools, against humanity.  There is a
+strange but never-failing relation between honest madmen and skillful
+knaves; and whenever one meets with collected numbers of the former, one
+may be very sure that they are secretly directed by the latter.  The
+popes, who have generally been both the ablest and the greatest knaves in
+Europe, wanted all the power and money of the East; for they had all that
+was in Europe already.  The times and the minds favored their design, for
+they were dark and uniformed; and Peter the Hermit, at once a knave and a
+madman, was a fine papal tool for so wild and wicked an undertaking.
+I wish we had good histories of every part of Europe, and indeed of the
+world, written upon the plan of Voltaire's 'de l'Esprit Humain'; for, I
+own, I am provoked at the contempt which most historians show for
+humanity in general: one would think by them that the whole human species
+consisted but of about a hundred and fifty people, called and dignified
+(commonly very undeservedly too) by the titles of emperors, kings, popes,
+generals, and ministers.
+
+I have never seen in any of the newspapers any mention of the affairs of
+the Cevennes, or Grenoble, which you gave me an account of some time ago;
+and the Duke de Mirepoix pretends, at least, to know nothing of either.
+Were they false reports? or does the French court choose to stifle them?
+I hope that they are both true, because I am very willing that the cares
+of the French government should be employed and confined to themselves.
+
+Your friend, the Electress Palatine, has sent me six wild boars' heads,
+and other 'pieces de sa chasse', in return for the fans, which she
+approved of extremely.  This present was signified to me by one Mr.
+Harold, who wrote me a letter in very indifferent English; I suppose he
+is a Dane who has been in England.
+
+Mr. Harte came to town yesterday, and dined with me to-day.  We talked
+you over; and I can assure you, that though a parson, and no member
+'du beau monde', he thinks all the most shining accomplishments of it
+full as necessary for you as I do.  His expression was, THAT IS ALL THAT
+HE WANTS; BUT IF HE WANTS THAT, CONSIDERING HIS SITUATION AND
+DESTINATION, HE MIGHT AS WELL WANT EVERYTHING ELSE.
+
+This is the day when people reciprocally offer and receive the kindest
+and the warmest wishes, though, in general, without meaning them on one
+side, or believing them on the other.  They are formed by the head, in
+compliance with custom, though disavowed by the heart, in consequence of
+nature.  His wishes upon this occasion are the best that are the best
+turned; you do not, I am sure, doubt the truth of mine, and therefore I
+will express them with a Quaker-like simplicity.  May this new year be a
+very new one indeed to you; may you put off the old, and put on the new
+man! but I mean the outward, not the, inward man.  With this alteration,
+I might justly sum up all my wishes for you in these words:
+
+          Dii tibi dent annos, de to nam caetera sumes.
+
+This minute, I receive your letter of the 26th past, which gives me a
+very disagreeable reason for your late silence.  By the symptoms which
+you mention of your illness, I both hope and believe that it was wholly
+owing to your own want of care.  You are rather inclined to be fat, you
+have naturally a good stomach, and you eat at the best tables; which must
+of course make you plethoric: and upon my word you will be very subject
+to these accidents, if you will not, from time to time, when you find
+yourself full, heated, or your head aching, take some little, easy,
+preventative purge, that would not confine you; such as chewing a little
+rhubarb when you go to bed at night; or some senna tea in the morning.
+You do very well to live extremely low, for some time; and I could wish,
+though I do not expect it, that you would take one gentle vomit; for
+those giddinesses and swimmings in the head always proceed from some
+foulness of the stomach.  However, upon the whole, I am very glad that
+your old complaint has not mixed itself with this, which I am fully
+convinced arises simply from your own negligence.  Adieu.
+
+I am sorry for Monsieur Kurze, upon his sister's account.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CLXXXVI
+
+LONDON, January 15, 1753
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: I never think my time so well employed, as when I think
+it employed to your advantage.  You have long had the greatest share of
+it; you now engross it.  The moment is now decisive; the piece is going
+to be exhibited to the public; the mere out lines and the general
+coloring are not sufficient to attract the eyes and to secure applause;
+but the last finishing, artful, and delicate strokes are necessary.
+Skillful judges will discern and acknowledge their merit; the ignorant
+will, without knowing why, feel their power.  In that view, I have thrown
+together, for your perusal, some maxims; or, to speak more properly,
+observations on men and things; for I have no merit as to the invention:
+I am no system monger; and, instead of giving way to my imagination,
+I have only consulted my memory; and my conclusions are all drawn from
+facts, not from fancy.  Most maxim mongers have preferred the prettiness
+to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth; but I have
+refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and
+confirm.  I wish you would consider them seriously, and separately, and
+recur to them again 'pro re nata' in similar cases.  Young men are as apt
+to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves
+sober enough.  They look upon spirit to be a much better thing than
+experience; which they call coldness.  They are but half mistaken; for
+though spirit, without experience, is dangerous, experience, without
+spirit, is languid and defective.  Their union, which is very rare, is
+perfection; you may join them, if you please; for all my experience is at
+your service; and I do not desire one grain of your spirit in return.
+Use them both, and let them reciprocally animate and check each other.
+I mean here, by the spirit of youth, only the vivacity and presumption of
+youth, which hinder them from seeing the difficulties or dangers of an
+undertaking, but I do not mean what the silly vulgar call spirit, by
+which they are captious, jealous of their rank, suspicious of being
+undervalued, and tart (as they call it) in their repartees, upon the
+slightest occasions.  This is an evil, and a very silly spirit, which
+should be driven out, and transferred to an herd of swine.  This is not
+the spirit of a man of fashion, who has kept good company.  People of an
+ordinary, low education, when they happen to fail into good company,
+imagine themselves the only object of its attention; if the company
+whispers, it is, to be sure, concerning them; if they laugh, it is at
+them; and if anything ambiguous, that by the most forced interpretation
+can be applied to them, happens to be said, they are convinced that it
+was meant at them; upon which they grow out of countenance first, and
+then angry.  This mistake is very well ridiculed in the "Stratagem,"
+where Scrub says, I AM SURE THEY TALKED OF ME FOR THEY LAUGHED
+CONSUMEDLY.  A well-bred man seldom thinks, but never seems to think
+himself slighted, undervalued, or laughed at in company, unless where it
+is so plainly marked out, that his honor obliges him to resent it in a
+proper manner; 'mais les honnetes gens ne se boudent jamais'.  I will
+admit that it is very difficult to command one's self enough, to behave
+with ease, frankness, and good-breeding toward those, who one knows
+dislike, slight, and injure one, as far as they can, without personal
+consequences; but I assert that it is absolutely necessary to do it: you
+must embrace the man you hate, if you cannot be justified in knocking him
+down; for otherwise you avow the injury which you cannot revenge.
+A prudent cuckold (and there are many such at Paris) pockets his horns
+when he cannot gore with them; and will not add to the triumph of his
+maker by only butting with them ineffectually.  A seeming ignorance is
+very often a most necessary part of worldly knowledge.  It is, for
+instance, commonly advisable to seem ignorant of what people offer to
+tell you; and when they say, Have you not heard of such a thing?  to
+answer No, and to let them go on; though you know it already.  Some have
+a pleasure in telling it, because they think that they tell it well;
+others have a pride in it, as being the sagacious discoverers; and many
+have a vanity in showing that they have been, though very undeservedly,
+trusted; all these would be disappointed, and consequently displeased,
+if you said Yes.  Seem always ignorant (unless to one's most intimate
+friend) of all matters of private scandal and defamation, though you
+should hear them a thousand times; for the parties affected always look
+upon the receiver to be almost as bad as the thief: and, whenever they
+become the topic of conversation seem to be a skeptic, though you are
+really a serious believer; and always take the extenuating part.  But all
+this seeming ignorance should be joined to thorough and extensive private
+informations: and, indeed, it is the best method of procuring them; for
+most people have such a vanity in showing a superiority over others,
+though but for a moment, and in the merest trifles, that they will tell
+you what they should not, rather than not show that they can tell what
+you did not know; besides that such seeming ignorance will make you pass
+for incurious and consequently undesigning.  However, fish for facts,
+and take pains to be well informed of everything that passes; but fish
+judiciously, and not always, nor indeed often, in the shape of direct
+questions, which always put people upon their guard, and, often repeated,
+grow tiresome.  But sometimes take the things that you would know for
+granted; upon which somebody will, kindly and officiously, set you right:
+sometimes say that you have heard so and so; and at other times seem to
+know more than you do, in order to know all that you want; but avoid
+direct questioning as much as you can.  All these necessary arts of the
+world require constant attention, presence of mind, and coolness.
+Achilles, though invulnerable, never went to battle but completely armed.
+Courts are to be the theatres of your wars, where you should be always as
+completely armed, and even with the addition of a heel-piece.  The least
+inattention, the least DISTRACTION, may prove fatal.  I would fain see
+you what pedants call 'omnis homo', and what Pope much better calls ALL-
+ACCOMPLISHED: you have the means in your power; add the will; and you may
+bring it about.  The vulgar have a coarse saying, of SPOILING A SHIP FOR
+A HALFPENNY WORTH OF TAR; prevent the application by providing the tar:
+it is very easily to be had in comparison with what you have already got.
+
+The fine Mrs. Pitt, who it seems saw you often at Paris, speaking of you
+the other day, said, in French, for she speaks little English, .  .  .
+whether it is that you did not pay the homage due to her beauty, or that
+it did not strike you as it does others, I cannot determine; but I hope
+she had some other reason than truth for saying it.  I will suppose that
+you did not care a pin for her; but, however, she surely deserved a
+degree of propitiatory adoration from you, which I am afraid you
+neglected.  Had I been in your case, I should have endeavored, at least,
+to have supplanted Mr. Mackay in his office of nocturnal reader to her.
+I played at cards, two days ago, with your friend Mrs. Fitzgerald, and
+her most sublime mother, Mrs. Seagrave; they both inquired after you; and
+Mrs. Fitzgerald said, she hoped you went on with your dancing; I said,
+Yes, and that you assured me, you had made such considerable improvements
+in it, that you had now learned to stand still, and even upright.  Your
+'virtuosa', la Signora Vestri, sung here the other day, with great
+applause: I presume you are INTIMATELY acquainted with her merit.  Good
+night to you, whoever you pass it with.
+
+I have this moment received a packet, sealed with your seal, though not
+directed by your hand, for Lady Hervey.  No letter from you!  Are you not
+well?
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CLXXXVII
+
+LONDON, May 27, O. S.  1753.
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND:  I have this day been tired, jaded, nay, tormented, by
+the company of a most worthy, sensible, and learned man, a near relation
+of mine, who dined and passed the evening with me.  This seems a paradox,
+but is a plain truth; he has no knowledge of the world, no manners, no
+address; far from talking without book, as is commonly said of people who
+talk sillily, he only talks by book; which in general conversation is ten
+times worse.  He has formed in his own closet from books, certain systems
+of everything, argues tenaciously upon those principles, and is both
+surprised and angry at whatever deviates from them.  His theories are
+good, but, unfortunately, are all impracticable.  Why?  because he has
+only read and not conversed.  He is acquainted with books, and an
+absolute stranger to men.  Laboring with his matter, he is delivered of
+it with pangs; he hesitates, stops in his utterance, and always expresses
+himself inelegantly.  His actions are all ungraceful; so that, with all
+his merit and knowledge, I would rather converse six hours with the most
+frivolous tittle-tattle woman who knew something of the world, than with
+him.  The preposterous notions of a systematical man who does not know
+the world, tire the patience of a man who does.  It would be endless to
+correct his mistakes, nor would he take it kindly: for he has considered
+everything deliberately, and is very sure that he is in the right.
+Impropriety is a characteristic, and a never-failing one, of these
+people.  Regardless, because ignorant, of customs and manners, they
+violate them every moment.  They often shock, though they never mean to
+offend: never attending either to the general character, or the
+particular distinguishing circumstances of the people to whom, or before
+whom they talk; whereas the knowledge of the world teaches one, that the
+very same things which are exceedingly right and proper in one company,
+time and place, are exceedingly absurd in others.  In short, a man who
+has great knowledge, from experience and observation, of the characters,
+customs, and manners of mankind, is a being as different from, and as
+superior to, a man of mere book and systematical knowledge, as a well-
+managed horse is to an ass.  Study, therefore, cultivate, and frequent
+men and women; not only in their outward, and consequently, guarded, but
+in their interior, domestic, and consequently less disguised, characters
+and manners.  Take your notions of things, as by observation and
+experience you find they really are, and not as you read that they are or
+should be; for they never are quite what they should be.  For this
+purpose do not content yourself with general and common acquaintance;
+but wherever you can, establish yourself, with a kind of domestic
+familiarity, in good houses.  For instance, go again to Orli, for two or
+three days, and so at two or three 'reprises'.  Go and stay two or three
+days at a time at Versailles, and improve and extend the acquaintance you
+have there.  Be at home at St. Cloud; and, whenever any private person of
+fashion invites you to, pass a few days at his country-house, accept of
+the invitation.  This will necessarily give you a versatility of mind,
+and a facility to adopt various manners and customs; for everybody
+desires to please those in whose house they are; and people are only to
+be pleased in their own way.  Nothing is more engaging than a cheerful
+and easy conformity to people's particular manners, habits, and even
+weaknesses; nothing (to use a vulgar expression) should come amiss to a
+young fellow.  He should be, for good purposes, what Alcibiades was
+commonly for bad ones, a Proteus, assuming with ease, and wearing with
+cheerfulness, any shape.  Heat, cold, luxury, abstinence, gravity,
+gayety, ceremony, easiness, learning, trifling, business, and pleasure,
+are modes which he should be able to take, lay aside, or change
+occasionally, with as much ease as he would take or lay aside his hat.
+All this is only to be acquired by use and knowledge of the world,
+by keeping a great deal of company, analyzing every character,
+and insinuating yourself into the familiarity of various acquaintance.
+A right, a generous ambition to make a figure in the world, necessarily
+gives the desire of pleasing; the desire of pleasing points out, to a
+great degree, the means of doing it; and the art of pleasing is, in
+truth, the art of rising, of distinguishing one's self, of making a
+figure and a fortune in the world.  But without pleasing, without the
+graces, as I have told you a thousand times, 'ogni fatica e vana'.  You
+are now but nineteen, an age at which most of your countrymen are
+illiberally getting drunk in port, at the university.  You have greatly
+got the start of them in learning; and if you can equally get the start
+of them in the knowledge and manners of the world, you may be very sure
+of outrunning them in court and parliament, as you set out much earlier
+than they.  They generally begin but to see the world at one-and-twenty;
+you will by that age have seen all Europe.  They set out upon their
+travels unlicked cubs: and in their travels they only lick one another,
+for they seldom go into any other company.  They know nothing but the
+English world, and the worst part of that too, and generally very little
+of any but the English language; and they come home, at three or four-
+and-twenty, refined and polished (as is said in one of Congreve's plays)
+like Dutch skippers from a whale-fishing.  The care which has been taken
+of you, and (to do you justice) the care that you have taken of yourself,
+has left you, at the age of nineteen only, nothing to acquire but the
+knowledge of the world, manners, address, and those exterior
+accomplishments.  But they are great and necessary acquisitions, to those
+who have sense enough to know their true value; and your getting them
+before you are one-and-twenty, and before you enter upon the active and
+shining scene of life, will give you such an advantage over all your
+contemporaries, that they cannot overtake you: they must be distanced.
+You may probably be placed about a young prince, who will probably be a
+young king.  There all the various arts of pleasing, the engaging
+address, the versatility of manners, the brillant, the graces, will
+outweigh, and yet outrun all solid knowledge and unpolished merit.  Oil
+yourself, therefore, and be both supple and shining, for that race, if
+you would be first, or early at the goal.  Ladies will most probably too
+have something to say there; and those who are best with them will
+probably be best SOMEWHERE ELSE.  Labor this great point, my dear child,
+indefatigably; attend to the very smallest parts, the minutest graces,
+the most trifling circumstances, that can possibly concur in forming the
+shining character of a complete gentleman, 'un galant homme, un homme de
+cour', a man of business and pleasure; 'estime des hommes, recherche des
+femmes, aime de tout le monde'.  In this view, observe the shining part
+of every man of fashion, who is liked and esteemed; attend to, and
+imitate that particular accomplishment for which you hear him chiefly
+celebrated and distinguished: then collect those various parts, and make
+yourself a mosiac of the whole.  No one body possesses everything, and
+almost everybody possesses some one thing worthy of imitation: only
+choose your models well; and in order to do so, choose by your ear more
+than by your eye.  The best model is always that which is most
+universally allowed to be the best, though in strictness it may possibly
+not be so.  We must take most things as they are, we cannot make them
+what we would, nor often what they should be; and where moral duties are
+not concerned, it is more prudent to follow than to attempt to lead.
+Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CLXXXVIII
+
+BATH, October 3, 1753
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: You have set out well at The Hague; you are in love with
+Madame Munter, which I am very glad of: you are in the fine company
+there, and I hope one of it: for it is not enough, at your age, to be
+merely in good company; but you should, by your address and attentions,
+make that good company think you one of them.  There is a tribute due to
+beauty, even independently of further views; which tribute I hope you
+paid with alacrity to Madame Munter and Madame Degenfeldt: depend upon
+it, they expected it, and were offended in proportion as that tribute
+seemed either unwillingly or scantily paid.  I believe my friend
+Kreuningen admits nobody now to his table, for fear of their
+communicating the plague to him, or at least the bite of a mad dog.
+Pray profit of the entrees libres that the French Ambassador has given
+you; frequent him, and SPEAK to him.  I think you will not do amiss to
+call upon Mr. Burrish, at Aix-la-Chapelle, since it is so little out of
+your way; and you will do still better, if you would, which I know you
+will not, drink those waters for five or six days only, to scour your
+stomach and bowels a little; I am sure it would do you a great deal of
+good Mr. Burrish can, doubtless, give you the best letters to Munich;
+and he will naturally give you some to Comte Preysing, or Comte Sinsheim,
+and such sort of grave people; but I could wish that you would ask him
+for some to young fellows of pleasure, or fashionable coquettes, that,
+you may be 'dans l'honnete debauche de Munich'.  A propos of your future
+motions; I leave you in a great measure the master of them, so shall only
+suggest my thoughts to you upon that subject.
+
+You have three electoral courts in view, Bonn, Munich, and Manheim.
+I would advise you to see two of them rather cursorily, and fix your
+tabernacle at the third, whichever that may be, for a considerable time.
+For instance, should you choose (as I fancy you will), to make Manheim the
+place of your residence, stay only ten or twelve days at Bonn, and as
+long at Munich, and then go and fix at Manheim; and so, vice versa, if
+you should like Bonn or Munich better than you think you would Manheim,
+make that the place of your residence, and only visit the other two.
+It is certain that no man can be much pleased himself, or please others
+much, in any place where he is only a bird of passage for eight or ten
+days; neither party thinking it worth while to make an acquaintance,
+still less to form any connection, for so short a time; but when months
+are the case, a man may domesticate himself pretty well, and very soon
+not be looked upon as a stranger.  This is the real utility of traveling,
+when, by contracting a familiarity at any place, you get into the inside
+of it, and see it in its undress.  That is the only way of knowing the
+customs, the manners, and all the little characteristical peculiarities
+that distinguish one place from another; but then this familiarity is not
+to be brought about by cold, formal visits of half an hour: no; you must
+show a willingness, a desire, an impatience of forming connections, 'il
+faut s'y preter, et y mettre du liant, du desir de plaire.  Whatever you
+do approve, you must be lavish in your praises of; and you must learn to
+commend what you do not approve of, if it is approved of there.  You are
+not much given to praise, I know; but it is because you do not yet know
+how extremely people are engaged by a seeming sanction to their own
+opinions, prejudices, and weaknesses, even in the merest trifles.  Our
+self-love is mortified when we think our opinions, and even our tastes,
+customs, and dresses, either arraigned or condemned; as on the contrary,
+it is tickled and flattered by approbation.  I will give you a remarkable
+instance of this kind.  The famous Earl of Shaftesbury, in the flagitious
+reign of Charles the Second, while he was Chancellor, had a mind to be a
+favorite, as well as a minister of the King; in order, therefore, to
+please his Majesty, whose prevailing passion was women, my Lord kept a
+w----e, whom he had no occasion for, and made no manner of use of.  The
+King soon heard of it, and asked him if it was true; he owned it was;
+but that, though he kept that one woman, he had several others besides,
+for he loved variety.  A few days afterward, the King, at his public
+levee, saw Lord Shaftesbury at some distance, and said in the circle,
+"One would not think that that little, weak man is the greatest whore-
+master in England; but I can assure you that he is."  Upon Lord
+Shaftesbury's coming into the circle, there was a general smile; the King
+said, "This is concerning you, my Lord."--"Me, sir?" answered the
+Chancellor, with some surprise.  "Yes, you," answered the King; "for I
+had just said that you were the greatest whore-master in England!  Is it
+not true?"--"Of a SUBJECT, Sir," replied Lord Shaftesbury, "perhaps I am."
+It is the same in everything; we think a difference of opinion, of
+conduct, of manners, a tacit reproach, at least, upon our own; we must
+therefore use ourselves to a ready conformity to whatever is neither
+criminal nor dishonorable.  Whoever differs from any general custom, is
+supposed both to think, and proclaim himself wiser than the rest of the
+world: which the rest of the world cannot bear, especially in a young
+man.  A young fellow is always forgiven and often applauded, when he
+carries a fashion to an excess; but never if he stops short of it.  The
+first is ascribed to youth and fire; but the latter is imputed to an
+affectation of singularity or superiority.  At your age, one is allowed
+to 'outrer' fashion, dress, vivacity, gallantry, etc., but by no means to
+be behindhand in any one of them.  And one may apply to youth in this
+case, 'Si non errasset, fecerat ille minus'.  Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CLXXXIX
+
+BATH, October 19, 1753
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND:  Of all the various ingredients that compose the useful
+and necessary art of pleasing, no one is so effectual and engaging as
+that gentleness, that 'douceur' of countenance and manner, to which you
+are no stranger, though (God knows why) a sworn enemy.  Other people take
+great pains to conceal or disguise their natural imperfections; some by
+the make of their clothes and other arts, endeavor to conceal the defects
+of their shape; women, who unfortunately have natural bad complexions,
+lay on good ones; and both men and women upon whom unkind nature has
+inflicted a surliness and ferocity of countenance, do at least all they
+can, though often without success, to soften and mitigate it; they affect
+'douceur', and aim at smiles, though often in the attempt, like the Devil
+in Milton, they GRIN HORRIBLY A GHASTLY SMILE.  But you are the only
+person I ever knew in the whole course of my life, who not only disdain,
+but absolutely reject and disguise a great advantage that nature has
+kindly granted.  You easily guess I mean COUNTENANCE; for she has given
+you a very pleasing one; but you beg to be excused, you will not accept
+it; but on the contrary, take singular pains to put on the most
+'funeste', forbidding, and unpleasing one that can possibly be imagined.
+This one would think impossible; but you know it to be true.  If you
+imagine that it gives you a manly, thoughtful, and decisive air, as some,
+though very few of your countrymen do, you are most exceedingly mistaken;
+for it is at best the air of a German corporal, part of whose exercise is
+to look fierce, and to 'blasemeer-op'.  You will say, perhaps, What, am I
+always to be studying my countenance, in order to wear this 'douceur'?  I
+answer, No; do it but for a fortnight, and you never will have occasion
+to think of it more.  Take but half the pains to recover the countenance
+that nature gave you, that you must have taken to disguise and deform it
+as you have, and the business will be done.  Accustom your eyes to a
+certain softness, of which they are very capable, and your face to
+smiles, which become it more than most faces I know.  Give all your
+motions, too, an air of 'douceur', which is directly the reverse of their
+present celerity and rapidity.  I wish you would adopt a little of 'l'air
+du Couvent' (you very well know what I mean) to a certain degree; it has
+something extremely engaging; there is a mixture of benevolence,
+affection, and unction in it; it is frequently really sincere, but is
+almost always thought so, and consequently pleasing.  Will you call this
+trouble?  It will not be half an hour's trouble to you in a week's time.
+But suppose it be, pray tell me, why did you give yourself the trouble of
+learning to dance so well as you do?  It is neither a religious, moral,
+or civil duty.  You must own, that you did it then singly to please, and
+you were, in the right on't.  Why do you wear fine clothes, and curl your
+hair?  Both are troublesome; lank locks, and plain flimsy rags are much
+easier.  This then you also do in order to please, and you do very right.
+But then, for God's sake, reason and act consequentially; and endeavor to
+please in other things too, still more essential; and without which the
+trouble you have taken in those is wholly thrown away.  You show your
+dancing, perhaps six times a year, at most; but you show your countenance
+and your common motions every day, and all day.  Which then, I appeal to
+yourself, ought you to think of the most, and care to render easy,
+graceful, and engaging?  Douceur of countenance and gesture can alone
+make them so.  You are by no means ill-natured; and would you then most
+unjustly be reckoned so?  Yet your common countenance intimates, and
+would make anybody who did not know you, believe it.  'A propos' of this,
+I must tell you what was said the other day to a fine lady whom you know,
+who is very good-natured in truth, but whose common countenance implies
+ill-nature, even to brutality.  It was Miss H----n, Lady M--y's niece,
+whom you have seen both at Blackheath and at Lady Hervey's.  Lady M--y
+was saying to me that you had a very engaging countenance when you had a
+mind to it, but that you had not always that mind; upon which Miss H----n
+said, that she liked your countenance best, when it was as glum as her
+own.  Why then, replied Lady M--y, you two should marry; for while you
+both wear your worst countenances, nobody else will venture upon either
+of you; and they call her now Mrs. Stanhope.  To complete this 'douceur'
+of countenance and motions, which I so earnestly recommend to you, you
+should carry it also to your expressions and manner of thinking, 'mettez
+y toujours de l'affectueux de l'onction'; take the gentle, the favorable,
+the indulgent side of most questions.  I own that the manly and sublime
+John Trott, your countryman, seldom does; but, to show his spirit and
+decision, takes the rough and harsh side, which he generally adorns with
+an oath, to seem more formidable.  This he only thinks fine; for to do
+John justice, he is commonly as good-natured as anybody.  These are among
+the many little things which you have not, and I have, lived long enough
+in the world to know of what infinite consequence they are in the course
+of life.  Reason then, I repeat it again, within yourself,
+CONSEQUENTIALLY; and let not the pains you have taken, and still take,
+to please in some things be a 'pure perte', by your negligence of, and
+inattention to others of much less trouble, and much more consequence.
+
+I have been of late much engaged, or rather bewildered, in Oriental
+history, particularly that of the Jews, since the destruction of their
+temple, and their dispersion by Titus; but the confusion and uncertainty
+of the whole, and the monstrous extravagances and falsehoods of the
+greatest part of it, disgusted me extremely.  Their Talmud, their
+Mischna, their Targums, and other traditions and writings of their
+Rabbins and Doctors, who were most of them Cabalists, are really more
+extravagant and absurd, if possible, than all that you have read in Comte
+de Gabalis; and indeed most of his stuff is taken from them.  Take this
+sample of their nonsense, which is transmitted in the writings of one of
+their most considerable Rabbins: "One Abas Saul, a man of ten feet high,
+was digging a grave, and happened to find the eye of Goliah, in which he
+thought proper to bury himself, and so he did, all but his head, which
+the Giant's eye was unfortunately not quite deep enough to receive."
+This, I assure you, is the most modest lie of ten thousand.  I have also
+read the Turkish history which, excepting the religious part, is not
+fabulous, though very possibly not true.  For the Turks, having no notion
+of letters and being, even by their religion, forbid the use of them,
+except for reading and transcribing the Koran, they have no historians of
+their own, nor any authentic records nor memorials for other historians
+to work upon; so that what histories we have of that country are written
+by foreigners; as Platina, Sir Paul Rycaut, Prince Cantimer, etc., or
+else snatches only of particular and short periods, by some who happened
+to reside there at those times; such as Busbequius, whom I have just
+finished.  I like him, as far as he goes, much the best of any of them:
+but then his account is, properly, only an account of his own Embassy,
+from the Emperor Charles the Fifth to Solyman the Magnificent.  However,
+there he gives, episodically, the best account I know of the customs and
+manners of the Turks, and of the nature of that government, which is a
+most extraordinary one.  For, despotic as it always seems, and sometimes
+is, it is in truth a military republic, and the real power resides in the
+Janissaries; who sometimes order their Sultan to strangle his Vizir, and
+sometimes the Vizir to depose or strangle his Sultan, according as they
+happen to be angry at the one or the other.  I own I am glad that the
+capital strangler should, in his turn, be STRANGLE-ABLE, and now and then
+strangled; for I know of no brute so fierce, nor no criminal so guilty,
+as the creature called a Sovereign, whether King, Sultan, or Sophy, who
+thinks himself, either by divine or human right, vested with an absolute
+power of destroying his fellow-creatures; or who, without inquiring into
+his right, lawlessly exerts that power.  The most excusable of all those
+human monsters are the Turks, whose religion teaches them inevitable
+fatalism.  A propos of the Turks, my Loyola, I pretend, is superior to
+your Sultan.  Perhaps you think this impossible, and wonder who this
+Loyola is.  Know then, that I have had a Barbet brought me from France,
+so exactly like the Sultan that he has been mistaken for him several
+times; only his snout is shorter, and his ears longer than the Sultan's.
+He has also the acquired knowledge of the Sultan; and I am apt to think
+that he studied under the same master at Paris.  His habit and his white
+band show him to be an ecclesiastic; and his begging, which he does very
+earnestly, proves him to be of a mendicant order; which, added to his
+flattery and insinuation, make him supposed to be a Jesuit, and have
+acquired him the name of Loyola.  I must not omit too, that when he
+breaks wind he smells exactly like the Sultan.
+
+I do not yet hear one jot the better for all my bathings and pumpings,
+though I have been here already full half my time; I consequently go very
+little into company, being very little fit for any.  I hope you keep
+company enough for us both; you will get more by that, than I shall by
+all my reading.  I read simply to amuse myself and fill up my time, of
+which I have too much; but you have two much better reasons for going
+into company, pleasure and profit.  May you find a great deal of both in
+a great deal of company!  Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXC
+
+LONDON, November 20, 1753
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND:  Two mails are now due from Holland, so that I have no
+letter from you to acknowledge; but that, you know, by long experience,
+does not hinder my writing to you.  I always receive your letters with
+pleasure; but I mean, and endeavor, that you should receive mine with
+some profit; preferring always your advantage to my own pleasure.
+
+If you find yourself well settled and naturalized at Manheim, stay there
+some time, and do not leave a certain for an uncertain good; but if you
+think you shall be as well, or better established at Munich, go there as
+soon as you please; and if disappointed, you can always return to Manheim
+I mentioned, in a former letter, your passing the Carnival at Berlin,
+which I think may be both useful and pleasing to you; however, do as you
+will; but let me know what you resolve: That King and that country have,
+and will have, so great a share in the affairs of Europe, that they are
+well worth being thoroughly known.
+
+Whether, where you are now, or ever may be hereafter, you speak French,
+German, or English most, I earnestly recommend to you a particular
+attention to the propriety and elegance of your style; employ the best
+words you can find in the language, avoid cacophony, and make your
+periods as harmonious as you can.  I need not, I am sure, tell you what
+you must often have felt, how much the elegance of diction adorns the
+best thoughts, and palliates the worst.  In the House of Commons it is
+almost everything; and, indeed, in every assembly, whether public or
+private.  Words, which are the dress of thoughts, deserve surely more
+care than clothes, which are only the dress of the person, and which,
+however, ought to have their share of attention.  If you attend to your
+style in any one language, it will give you a habit of attending to it in
+every other; and if once you speak either French or German very
+elegantly, you will afterward speak much the better English for it.
+I repeat it to you again, for at least the thousandth time, exert your
+whole attention now in acquiring the ornamental parts of character.
+People know very little of the world, and talk nonsense, when they talk
+of plainness and solidity unadorned: they will do in nothing; mankind has
+been long out of a state of nature, and the golden age of native
+simplicity will never return.  Whether for the better or the worse, no
+matter; but we are refined; and plain manners, plain dress, and plain
+diction, would as little do in life, as acorns, herbage, and the water of
+the neighboring spring, would do at table.  Some people are just come,
+who interrupt me in the middle of my sermon; so good-night.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXCI
+
+LONDON, November 26, 1753
+
+DEAR FRIEND:  Fine doings at Manheim!  If one may give credit to the
+weekly histories of Monsieur Roderigue, the finest writer among the
+moderns; not only 'des chasses brillantes et nombreuses des operas ou les
+acteurs se surpassent les jours des Saints de L. L. A. A. E. E.
+serenissimes celebres; en grand gala'; but to crown the whole, Monsieur
+Zuchmantel is happily arrived, and Monsieur Wartenslebeu hourly expected.
+I hope that you are 'pars magna' of all these delights; though, as Noll
+Bluff says, in the "Old Bachelor," THAT RASCALLY GAZETTEER TAKES NO MORE
+NOTICE OF YOU THAN IF YOU WERE NOT IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING.  I should
+think that he might at least have taken notice that in these rejoicings
+you appeared with a rejoicing, and not a gloomy countenance; and you
+distinguished yourself in that numerous and shining company, by your air,
+dress, address, and attentions.  If this was the case, as I will both
+hope and suppose it was, I will, if you require it, have him written to,
+to do you justice in his next 'supplement'.  Seriously, I am very glad
+that you are whirled in that 'tourbillon' of pleasures; they smooth,
+polish, and rub off rough corners: perhaps too, you have some particular
+COLLISION, which is still more effectual.
+
+Schannat's "History of the Palatinate" was, I find, written originally in
+German, in which language I suppose it is that you have read it; but,
+as I must humbly content myself with the French translation, Vaillant has
+sent for it for me from Holland, so that I have not yet read it.  While
+you are in the Palatinate, you do very well to read everything relative
+to it; you will do still better if you make that reading the foundation
+of your inquiries into the more minute circumstances and anecdotes of
+that country, whenever you are in company with informed and knowing
+people.
+
+The Ministers here, intimidated on the absurd and groundless clamors of
+the mob, have, very weakly in my mind, repealed, this session, the bill
+which they had passed in the last for rendering Jews capable of being
+naturalized by subsequent acts of parliament.  The clamorers triumph, and
+will doubtless make further demands, which, if not granted, this piece of
+complaisance will soon be forgotten.  Nothing is truer in politics, than
+this reflection of the Cardinal de Retz, 'Que le peuple craint toujours
+quand on ne le craint pas'; and consequently they grow unreasonable and
+insolent, when they find that they are feared.  Wise and honest governors
+will never, if they can help it, give the people just cause to complain;
+but then, on the other hand, they will firmly withstand groundless
+clamor.  Besides that this noise against the Jew bill proceeds from that
+narrow mobspirit of INTOLERATION in religious, and inhospitality in civil
+matters; both which all wise governments should oppose.
+
+The confusion in France increases daily, as, no doubt, you are informed
+where you are.  There is an answer of the clergy to the remonstrances of
+the parliament, lately published, which was sent me by the last post from
+France, and which I would have sent you, inclosed in this, were it not
+too bulky.  Very probably you may see it at Manheim, from the French
+Minister: it is very well worth your reading, being most artfully and
+plausibly written, though founded upon false principles; the 'jus
+divinum' of the clergy, and consequently their supremacy in all matters
+of faith and doctrine are asserted; both which I absolutely deny.  Were
+those two points allowed the clergy of any country whatsoever, they must
+necessarily govern that country absolutely; everything being, directly or
+indirectly, relative to faith or doctrine; and whoever is supposed to
+have the power of saving and damning souls to all eternity (which power
+the clergy pretend to), will be much more considered, and better obeyed,
+than any civil power that forms no pretensions beyond this world.
+Whereas, in truth, the clergy in every country are, like all other
+subjects, dependent upon the supreme legislative power, and are appointed
+by that power under whatever restrictions and limitations it pleases, to
+keep up decency and decorum in the church, just as constables are to keep
+peace in the parish.  This Fra Paolo has clearly proved, even upon their
+own principles of the Old and New Testament, in his book 'de Beneficiis',
+which I recommend to you to read with attention; it is short.  Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXCII
+
+LONDON, December 25, 1753
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND:  Yesterday again I received two letters at once from you,
+the one of the 7th, the other of the 15th, from Manheim.
+
+You never had in your life so good a reason for not writing, either to me
+or to anybody else, as your sore finger lately furnished you.  I believe
+it was painful, and I am glad it is cured; but a sore finger, however
+painful, is a much less evil than laziness, of either body or mind, and
+attended by fewer ill consequences.
+
+I am very glad to hear that you were distinguished at the court of
+Manheim from the rest of your countrymen and fellow-travelers: it is a
+sign that you had better manners and address than they; for take it for
+granted, the best-bred people will always be the best received wherever
+they go.  Good manners are the settled medium of social, as specie is of
+commercial life; returns are equally expected for both; and people will
+no more advance their civility to a bear, than their money to a bankrupt.
+I really both hope and believe, that the German courts will do you a
+great deal of good; their ceremony and restraint being the proper
+correctives and antidotes for your negligence and inattention.  I believe
+they would not greatly relish your weltering in your own laziness, and an
+easy chair; nor take it very kindly, if, when they spoke to you or you to
+them, you looked another way, as much as to say, kiss my b----h.  As they
+give, so they require attention; and, by the way, take this maxim for an
+undoubted truth, That no young man can possibly improve in any company,
+for which he has not respect enough to be under some degree of restraint.
+
+I dare not trust to Meyssonier's report of his Rhenish, his Burgundy not
+having answered either his account or my expectations.  I doubt, as a
+wine merchant, he is the 'perfidus caupo', whatever he may be as a
+banker.  I shall therefore venture upon none of his wine; but delay
+making my provision of Old Hock, till I go abroad myself next spring: as
+I told you in the utmost secrecy, in my last, that I intend to do; and
+then probably I may taste some that I like, and go upon sure ground.
+There is commonly very good, both at Aix-la-Chapelle and Liege, where I
+formerly got some excellent, which I carried with me to Spa, where I
+drank no other wine.
+
+As my letters to you frequently miscarry, I will repeat in this that part
+of my last which related to your future motions.  Whenever you shall be
+tired of Berlin, go to Dresden; where Sir Charles Williams will be, who
+will receive you with open arms.  He dined with me to-day, and sets out
+for Dresden in about six weeks.  He spoke of you with great kindness and
+impatience to see you again.  He will trust and employ you in business
+(and he is now in the whole secret of importance) till we fix our place
+to meet in: which probably will be Spa.  Wherever you are, inform
+yourself minutely of, and attend particularly to the affairs of France;
+they grow serious, and in my opinion will grow more and more so every
+day.  The King is despised and I do not wonder at it; but he has brought
+it about to be hated at the same time, which seldom happens to the same
+man.  His ministers are known to be as disunited as incapable; he
+hesitates between the Church and the parliaments, like the ass in the
+fable, that starved between two hampers of hay: too much in love with his
+mistress to part with her, and too much afraid of his soul to enjoy her;
+jealous of the parliaments, who would support his authority; and a
+devoted bigot to the Church, that would destroy it.  The people are poor,
+consequently discontented; those who have religion, are divided in their
+notions of it; which is saying that they hate one another.  The clergy
+never do forgive; much less will they forgive the parliament; the
+parliament never will forgive them.  The army must, without doubt, take,
+in their own minds at last, different parts in all these disputes, which
+upon occasion would break out.  Armies, though always the supporters and
+tools of absolute power for the time being, are always the destroyers of
+it, too, by frequently changing the hands in which they think proper to
+lodge it.  This was the case of the Praetorian bands, who deposed and
+murdered the monsters they had raised to oppress mankind.  The
+Janissaries in turkey, and the regiments of guards in Russia, do the same
+now.  The French nation reasons freely, which they never did before, upon
+matters of religion and government, and begin to be 'sprejiudicati'; the
+officers do so too; in short, all the symptoms, which I have ever met
+with in history previous to great changes and revolutions in government,
+now exist, and daily increase, in France.  I am glad of it; the rest of
+Europe will be the quieter, and have time to recover.  England, I am
+sure, wants rest, for it wants men and money; the Republic of the United
+Provinces wants both still more; the other Powers cannot well dance, when
+neither France, nor the maritime powers, can, as they used to do, pay the
+piper.  The first squabble in Europe, that I foresee, will be about the
+Crown of Poland, should the present King die: and therefore I wish his
+Majesty a long life and a merry Christmas.  So much for foreign politics;
+but 'a propos' of them, pray take care, while you are in those parts of
+Germany, to inform yourself correctly of all the details, discussions,
+and agreements, which the several wars, confiscations, bans, and
+treaties, occasioned between the Bavarian and Palatine Electorates; they
+are interesting and curious.
+
+I shall not, upon the occasion of the approaching new year, repeat to you
+the wishes which I continue to form for you; you know them all already,
+and you know that it is absolutely in your power to satisfy most of them.
+Among many other wishes, this is my most earnest one:  That you would
+open the new year with a most solemn and devout sacrifice to the Graces;
+who never reject those that supplicate them with fervor; without them,
+let me tell you, that your friend Dame Fortune will stand you in little
+stead; may they all be your friends!  Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXCIII
+
+LONDON, January 15, 1754
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: I have this moment received your letter of the 26th past
+from Munich.  Since you are got so well out of the distress and dangers
+of your journey from Manheim, I am glad that you were in them:
+
+                    "Condisce i diletti
+                    Memorie di pene,
+                    Ne sa che sia bene
+                    Chi mal non soffri."
+
+They were but little samples of the much greater distress and dangers
+which you must expect to meet within your great, and I hope, long journey
+through life.  In some parts of it, flowers are scattered, with
+profusion, the road is smooth, and the prospect pleasant: but in others
+(and I fear the greater number) the road is rugged, beset with thorns and
+briars, and cut by torrents.  Gather the flowers in your way; but, at the
+same time, guard against the briars that are either mixed with them, or
+that most certainly succeed them.
+
+I thank you for your wild boar; who, now he is dead, I assure him, 'se
+laissera bien manger malgre qu'il en ait'; though I am not so sure that I
+should have had that personal valor which so successfully distinguished
+you in single combat with him, which made him bite the dust like Homer's
+heroes, and, to conclude my period sublimely, put him into that PICKLE,
+from which I propose eating him.  At the same time that I applaud your
+valor, I must do justice to your modesty; which candidly admits that you
+were not overmatched, and that your adversary was about your own age and
+size.  A Maracassin, being under a year old, would have been below your
+indignation.  'Bete de compagne', being under two years old, was still,
+in my opinion, below your glory; but I guess that your enemy was 'un
+Ragot', that is, from two to three years old; an age and size which,
+between man and boar, answer pretty well to yours.
+
+If accidents of bad roads or waters do not detain you at Munich, I do not
+fancy that pleasures will: and I rather believe you will seek for, and
+find them, at the Carnival at Berlin; in which supposition, I eventually
+direct this letter to your banker there.  While you are at Berlin (I
+earnestly recommend it to you again and again) pray CARE to see, hear,
+know, and mind, everything there.  THE ABLEST PRINCE IN EUROPE is surely
+an object that deserves attention; and the least thing that he does, like
+the smallest sketches of the greatest painters, has its value, and a
+considerable one too.
+
+Read with care the Code Frederick, and inform yourself of the good
+effects of it in those parts of, his dominions where it has taken place,
+and where it has banished the former chicanes, quirks, and quibbles of
+the old law.  Do not think any detail too minute or trifling for your
+inquiry and observation.  I wish that you could find one hour's leisure
+every day, to read some good Italian author, and to converse in that
+language with our worthy friend Signor Angelo Cori; it would both refresh
+and improve your Italian, which, of the many languages you know, I take
+to be that in which you are the least perfect; but of which, too, you
+already know enough to make yourself master of, with very little trouble,
+whenever you please.
+
+Live, dwell, and grow at the several courts there; use them so much to
+your face, that they may not look upon you as a stranger.  Observe, and
+take their 'ton', even to their affectations and follies; for such there
+are, and perhaps should be, at all courts.  Stay, in all events, at
+Berlin, till I inform you of Sir Charles Williams's arrival at Dresden;
+where I suppose you would not care to be before him, and where you may go
+as soon after him as ever you please.  Your time there will neither be
+unprofitably nor disagreeably spent; he will introduce you into all the
+best company, though he can introduce you to none so good as his own.  He
+has of late applied himself very seriously to foreign affairs, especially
+those of Saxony and Poland; he knows them perfectly well, and will tell
+you what he knows.  He always expresses, and I have good reason to
+believe very sincerely, great kindness and affection for you.
+
+The works of the late Lord Bolingbroke are just published, and have
+plunged me into philosophical studies; which hitherto I have not been
+much used to, or delighted with; convinced of the futility of those
+researches; but I have read his "Philosophical Essay" upon the extent of
+human knowledge, which, by the way, makes two large quartos and a half.
+He there shows very clearly, and with most splendid eloquence, what the
+human mind can and cannot do; that our understandings are wisely
+calculated for our place in this planet, and for the link which we form
+in the universal chain of things; but that they are by no means capable
+of that degree of knowledge, which our curiosity makes us search after,
+and which our vanity makes us often believe we arrive at.  I shall not
+recommend to you the reading of that work; but, when you return hither,
+I shall recommend to your frequent and diligent perusal all his tracts
+that are relative to our history and constitution; upon which he throws
+lights, and scatters graces, which no other writer has ever done.
+
+Reading, which was always a pleasure to me, in the time even of my
+greatest dissipation, is now become my only refuge; and, I fear, I
+indulge it too much at the expense of my eyes.  But what can I do?
+I must do something; I cannot bear absolute idleness; my ears grow every
+day more useless to me, my eyes consequently more necessary; I will not
+hoard them like a miser, but will rather risk the loss, than not enjoy
+the use of them.
+
+Pray let me know all the particulars, not only of your reception at
+Munich, but also at Berlin; at the latter, I believe, it will be a good
+one; for his Prussian Majesty knows, that I have long been AN ADMIRER AND
+RESPECTER OF HIS GREAT AND VARIOUS TALENTS.  Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXCIV
+
+LONDON, February 1, 1754
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: I received, yesterday, yours of the 12th, from Munich; in
+consequence of which, I direct this to you there, though I directed my
+three last to Berlin, where I suppose you will find them at your arrival.
+Since you are not only domesticated, but 'niche' at Munich, you are much
+in the right to stay there.  It is not by seeing places that one knows
+them, but by familiar and daily conversations with the people of fashion.
+I would not care to be in the place of that prodigy of beauty, whom you
+are to drive 'dans la course de Traineaux'; and I am apt to think you are
+much more likely to break her bones, than she is, though ever so cruel,
+to break your heart.  Nay, I am not sure but that, according to all the
+rules of gallantry, you are obliged to overturn her on purpose; in the
+first place, for the chance of seeing her backside; in the next, for the
+sake of the contrition and concern which it would give you an opportunity
+of showing; and, lastly, upon account of all the 'gentillesses et
+epigrammes', which it would naturally suggest.  Voiture has made several
+stanzas upon an accident of that kind, which happened to a lady of his
+acquaintance.  There is a great deal of wit in them, rather too much;
+for, according to the taste of those times, they are full of what the
+Italians call 'concetti spiritosissimi'; the Spaniards 'agudeze'; and we,
+affectation and quaintness.  I hope you have endeavored to suit your
+'Traineau' to the character of the fair-one whom it is to contain.  If
+she is of an irascible, impetuous disposition (as fine women can
+sometimes be), you will doubtless place her in the body of a lion, a
+tiger, a dragon, or some tremendous beast of prey and fury; if she is a
+sublime and stately beauty, which I think more probable (for
+unquestionably she is 'hogh gebohrne'), you will, I suppose, provide a
+magnificent swan or proud peacock for her reception; but if she is all
+tenderness and softness, you have, to be sure, taken care amorous doves
+and wanton sparrows should seem to flutter round her.  Proper mottos, I
+take it for granted, that you have eventually prepared; but if not, you
+may find a great many ready-made ones in 'Les Entretiens d'Ariste et
+d'Eugene, sur les Devises', written by Pere Bouhours, and worth your
+reading at any time.  I will not say to you, upon this occasion, like the
+father in Ovid,
+
+          "Parce, puer, stimulis, et fortius utere loris."
+
+On the contrary, drive on briskly; it is not the chariot of the sun that
+you drive, but you carry the sun in your chariot; consequently, the
+faster it goes, the less it will be likely to scorch or consume.  This is
+Spanish enough, I am sure.
+
+If this finds you still at Munich, pray make many compliments from me to
+Mr. Burrish, to whom I am very much obliged for all his kindness to you;
+it is true, that while I had power I endeavored to serve him; but it is
+as true too, that I served many others more, who have neither returned
+nor remembered those services.
+
+I have been very ill this last fortnight, of your old Carniolian
+complaint, the 'arthritis vaga'; luckily, it did not fall upon my breast,
+but seized on my right arm; there it fixed its seat of empire; but, as in
+all tyrannical governments, the remotest parts felt their share of its
+severity.  Last post I was not able to hold a pen long enough to write to
+you, and therefore desired Mr. Grevenkop to do it for me; but that letter
+was directed to Berlin.  My pain is now much abated, though I have still
+some fine remains of it in my shoulder, where I fear it will tease me a
+great while.  I must be careful to take Horace's advice, and consider
+well, 'Quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent'.
+
+Lady Chesterfield bids me make you her compliments, and assure you that
+the music will be much more welcome to her with you, than without you.
+
+In some of my last letters, which were directed to, and will, I suppose,
+wait for you at Berlin, I complimented you, and with justice, upon your
+great improvement of late in the epistolary way, both with regard to the
+style and the turn of your letters; your four or five last to me have
+been very good ones, and one that you wrote to Mr. Harte, upon the new
+year, was so pretty a one, and he was so much and so justly pleased with
+it, that he sent it me from Windsor the instant he had read it.  This
+talent (and a most necessary one it is in the course of life) is to be
+acquired by resolving, and taking pains to acquire it; and, indeed, so is
+every talent except poetry, which is undoubtedly a gift.  Think,
+therefore, night and day, of the turn, the purity, the correctness, the
+perspicuity, and the elegance of whatever you speak or write; take my
+word for it, your labor will not be in vain, but greatly rewarded by tho
+harvest of praise and success which it will bring you.  Delicacy of turn,
+and elegance of style, are ornaments as necessary to common sense, as
+attentions, address, and fashionable manners, are to common civility;
+both may subsist without them,  but then, without being of the least use
+to the owner.  The figure of a man is exactly the same in dirty rags, or
+in the finest and best chosen clothes; but in which of the two he is the
+most likely to please, and to be received in good company, I leave to you
+to determine.
+
+Both my arm and my paper hint to me, to bid you good-night.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXCV
+
+LONDON, February 12, 1754.
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: I take my aim, and let off this letter at you at Berlin;
+I should be sorry it missed you, because I believe you will read it with
+as much pleasure as I write it.  It is to inform you, that, after some
+difficulties and dangers, your seat in the new parliament is at last
+absolutely secured, and that without opposition, or the least necessity
+of your personal trouble or appearance.  This success, I must further
+inform you, is in a great degree owing to Mr. Eliot's friendship to us
+both; for he brings you in with himself at his surest borough.  As it was
+impossible to act with more zeal and friendship than Mr. Eliot has acted
+in this whole affair, I desire that you will, by the very next post,
+write him a letter of thanks, warm and young thanks, not old and cold
+ones.  You may inclose it in yours to me, and, I will send it to him, for
+he is now in Cornwall.
+
+Thus, sure of being a senator, I dare say you do not propose to be one of
+the 'pedarii senatores, et pedibus ire in sententiam; for, as the House
+of Commons is the theatre where you must make your fortune and figure in
+the world, you must resolve to be an actor, and not a 'persona muta',
+which is just equivalent to a candle snuffer upon other theatres.
+Whoever does not shine there, is obscure, insignificant and contemptible;
+and you cannot conceive how easy it is for a man of half your sense and
+knowledge to shine there if he pleases.  The receipt to make a speaker,
+and an applauded one too, is short and easy.--Take of common sense
+'quantum sufcit', add a little application to the rules and orders of the
+House, throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with
+a large quantity of purity, correctness, and elegance of style.  Take it
+for granted, that by far the greatest part of mankind do neither analyze
+nor search to the bottom; they are incapable of penetrating deeper than
+the surface.  All have senses to be gratified, very few have reason to be
+applied to.  Graceful utterance and action please their eyes, elegant
+diction tickles their ears; but strong reason would be thrown away upon
+them.  I am not only persuaded by theory, but convinced by my experience,
+that (supposing a certain degree of common sense) what is called a good
+speaker is as much a mechanic as a good shoemaker; and that the two
+trades are equally to be learned by the same degree of application.
+Therefore, for God's sake, let this trade be the principal object of your
+thoughts; never lose sight of it.  Attend minutely to your style,
+whatever language you speak or write in; seek for the best words, and
+think of the best turns.  Whenever you doubt of the propriety or elegance
+of any word, search the dictionary or some good author for it, or inquire
+of somebody, who is master of that language; and, in a little time,
+propriety and elegance of diction will become so habitual to you, that
+they will cost you no more trouble.  As I have laid this down to be
+mechanical and attainable by whoever will take the necessary pains, there
+will be no great vanity in my saying, that I saw the importance of the
+object so early, and attended to it so young, that it would now cost me
+more trouble to speak or write ungrammatically, vulgarly, and
+inelegantly, than ever it did to avoid doing so.  The late Lord
+Bolingbroke, without the least trouble, talked all day long, full as
+elegantly as he wrote.  Why?  Not by a peculiar gift from heaven; but,
+as he has often told me himself, by an early and constant attention to
+his style.  The present Solicitor-General, Murray,--[Created Lord
+Mansfield in the year 1756.]--has less law than many lawyers, but has
+more practice than any; merely upon account of his eloquence, of which he
+has a never-failing stream.  I remember so long ago as when I was at
+Cambridge, whenever I read pieces of eloquence (and indeed they were my
+chief study) whether ancient or modern, I used to write down the shining
+passages, and then translate them, as well and as elegantly as ever I
+could; if Latin or French, into English; if English, into French.  This,
+which I practiced for some years, not only improved and formed my style,
+but imprinted in my mind and memory the best thoughts of the best
+authors.  The trouble was little, but the advantage I have experienced
+was great.  While you are abroad, you can neither have time nor
+opportunity to read pieces of English or parliamentary eloquence,
+as I hope you will carefully do when you return; but, in the meantime,
+whenever pieces of French eloquence come in your way, such as the
+speeches of persons received into the Academy, 'orasions funebres',
+representations of the several parliaments to the King, etc., read them
+in that view, in that spirit; observe the harmony, the turn and elegance
+of the style; examine in what you think it might have been better; and
+consider in what, had you written it yourself; you might have done worse.
+Compare the different manners of expressing the same thoughts in
+different authors; and observe how differently the same things appear in
+different dresses.  Vulgar, coarse, and ill-chosen words, will deform and
+degrade the best thoughts as much as rags and dirt will the best figure.
+In short, you now know your object; pursue it steadily, and have no
+digressions that are not relative to, and connected with, the main
+action.  Your success in parliament will effectually remove all OTHER
+OBJECTIONS; either a foreign or a domestic destination will no longer be
+refused you, if you make your way to it through Westminster.
+
+I think I may now say, that I am quite recovered from my late illness,
+strength and spirits excepted, which are not yet restored.  Aix-la-
+Chapelle and Spa will, I believe, answer all my purposes.
+
+I long to hear an account of your reception at Berlin, which I fancy will
+be a most gracious one.  Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXCVI
+
+LONDON, February 15, 1754
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: I can now with great truth apply your own motto to you,
+'Nullum numen abest, si sit Prudentia'.  You are sure of being, as early
+as your age will permit, a member of that House; which is the only road
+to figure and fortune in this country.  Those, indeed, who are bred up
+to, and distinguish themselves in particular professions, as the army,
+the navy, and the law, may, by their own merit, raise themselves to a
+certain degree; but you may observe too, that they never get to the top,
+without the assistance of parliamentary talents and influence.  The means
+of distinguishing yourself in parliament are, as I told you in my last,
+much more easily attained than I believe you imagine.  Close attendance
+to the business of the House will soon give you the parliamentary
+routine; and strict attention to your style will soon make you, not only
+a speaker, but a good one.  The vulgar look upon a man, who is reckoned a
+fine speaker, as a phenomenon, a supernatural being, and endowed with
+some peculiar gift of heaven; they stare at him, if he walks in the Park,
+and cry, THAT IS HE.  You will, I am sure, view him in a juster light,
+and 'nulla formidine'.  You will consider him only as a man of good
+sense, who adorns common thoughts with the graces of elocution, and the
+elegance of style.  The miracle will then cease; and you will be
+convinced, that with the same application, and attention to the same
+objects, you may most certainly equal, and perhaps surpass, this prodigy.
+Sir W---- Y-------, with not a quarter of your parts, and not a
+thousandth part of your knowledge, has, by a glibness of tongue simply,
+raised him successively to the best employments of the kingdom; he has
+been Lord of the Admiralty, Lord of the Treasury, Secretary at War, and
+is now Vice-Treasurer of Ireland; and all this with a most sullied, not
+to say blasted character.  Represent the thing to yourself, as it really
+is, easily attainable, and you will find it so.  Have but ambition enough
+passionately to desire the object, and spirit enough to use the means,
+and I will be answerable for your success.  When I was younger than you
+are, I resolved within myself that I would in all events be a speaker in
+parliament, and a good one too, if I could.  I consequently never lost
+sight of that object, and never neglected any of the means that I thought
+led to it.  I succeeded to a certain degree; and, I assure you, with
+great ease, and without superior talents.  Young people are very apt to
+overrate both men and things, from not being enough acquainted with them.
+In proportion as you come to know them better, you will value them less.
+You will find that reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom
+does; but that passions and weaknesses commonly usurp its seat, and rule
+in its stead.  You will find that the ablest have their weak sides too,
+and are only comparatively able, with regard to the still weaker herd:
+having fewer weaknesses themselves, they are able to avail themselves of
+the innumerable ones of the generality of mankind: being more masters of
+themselves, they become more easily masters of others.  They address
+themselves to their weaknesses, their senses, their passions; never to
+their reason; and consequently seldom fail of success.  But then analyze
+those great, those governing, and, as the vulgar imagine, those perfect
+characters, and you will find the great Brutus a thief in Macedonia, the
+great Cardinal Richelieu a jealous poetaster, and the great Duke of
+Marlborough a miser.  Till you come to know mankind by your own
+experience, I know no thing, nor no man, that can in the meantime bring
+you so well acquainted with them as le Duc de la Rochefoucault: his
+little book of "Maxims," which I would advise you to look into, for some
+moments at least, every day of your life, is, I fear, too like, and too
+exact a picture of human nature.
+
+I own, it seems to degrade it; but yet my experience does not convince me
+that it degrades it unjustly.
+
+Now, to bring all this home to my first point.  All these considerations
+should not only invite you to attempt to make a figure in parliament, but
+encourage you to hope that you shall succeed.  To govern mankind, one
+must not overrate them: and to please an audience, as a speaker, one must
+not overvalue it.  When I first came into the House of Commons, I
+respected that assembly as a venerable one; and felt a certain awe upon
+me, but, upon better acquaintance, that awe soon vanished; and I
+discovered, that, of the five hundred and sixty, not above thirty could
+understand reason, and that all the rest were 'peuple'; that those thirty
+only required plain common sense, dressed up in good language; and that
+all the others only required flowing and harmonious periods, whether they
+conveyed any meaning or not; having ears to hear, but not sense enough to
+judge.  These considerations made me speak with little concern the first
+time, with less the second, and with none at all the third.  I gave
+myself no further trouble about anything, except my elocution, and my
+style; presuming, without much vanity, that I had common sense sufficient
+not to talk nonsense.  Fix these three truths strongly in your mind:
+First, that it is absolutely necessary for you to speak in parliament;
+secondly, that it only requires a little human attention, and no
+supernatural gifts; and, thirdly, that you have all the reason in the
+world to think that you shall speak well.  When we meet, this shall be
+the principal subject of our conversations; and, if you will follow my
+advice, I will answer for your success.
+
+Now from great things to little ones; the transition is to me easy,
+because nothing seems little to me that can be of any use to you.  I hope
+you take great care of your mouth and teeth, and that you clean them well
+every morning with a sponge and tepid water, with a few drops of
+arquebusade water dropped into it; besides washing your mouth carefully
+after every meal, I do insist upon your never using those sticks, or any
+hard substance whatsoever, which always rub away the gums, and destroy
+the varnish of the teeth.  I speak this from woeful experience; for my
+negligence of my teeth, when I was younger than you are, made them bad;
+and afterward, my desire to have them look better, made me use sticks,
+irons, etc., which totally destroyed them; so that I have not now above
+six or seven left.  I lost one this morning, which suggested this advice
+to you.
+
+I have received the tremendous wild boar, which your still more
+tremendous arm slew in the immense deserts of the Palatinate; but have
+not yet tasted of it, as it is hitherto above my low regimen.  The late
+King of Prussia, whenever he killed any number of wild boars, used to
+oblige the Jews to buy them, at a high price, though they could eat none
+of them; so they defrayed the expense of his hunting.  His son has juster
+rules of government, as the Code Frederick plainly shows.
+
+I hope, that, by this time, you are as well 'ancre' at Berlin as you was
+at Munich; but, if not, you are sure of being so at Dresden.  Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXCVII
+
+LONDON, February 26, 1754.
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND:  I have received your letters of the 4th, from Munich,
+and of the 11th from Ratisbon; but I have not received that of the 31st
+January, to which you refer in the former.  It is to this negligence and
+uncertainty of the post, that you owe your accidents  between Munich and
+Ratisbon: for, had you received my letters regularly, you would have
+received one from me before you left Munich, in which I advised you to
+stay, since you were so well there.  But, at all events, you were in the
+wrong to set out from Munich in such weather and such roads; since you
+could never imagine that I had set my heart so much upon your going to
+Berlin, as to venture your being buried in the snow for it.  Upon the
+whole, considering all you are very well off.  You do very well, in my
+mind, to return to Munich, or at least to keep within the circle of
+Munich, Ratisbon, and Manheim, till the weather and the roads are good:
+stay at each or any of those places as long as ever you please; for I am
+extremely indifferent about your going to Berlin.
+
+As to our meeting, I will tell you my plan, and you may form your own
+accordingly.  I propose setting out from hence the last week in April,
+then drinking the Aix-la-Chapelle waters for a week, and from thence
+being at Spa about the 15th of May, where I shall stay two months at
+most, and then return straight to England.  As I both hope and believe
+that there will be no mortal at Spa during my residence there, the
+fashionable season not beginning till the middle of July, I would by no
+means have you come there at first, to be locked up with me and some few
+Capucins, for two months, in that miserable hole; but I would advise you
+to stay where you like best, till about the first week in July, and then
+to come and pick me up at Spa, or meet me upon the road at Liege or
+Brussels.  As for the intermediate time, should you be weary of Manheim
+and Munich, you may, if you please, go to Dresden, to Sir Charles
+Williams, who will be there before that time; or you may come for a month
+or six weeks to The Hague; or, in short, go or stay wherever you like
+best.  So much for your motions.
+
+As you have sent for all the letters directed to you at Berlin, you will
+receive from thence volumes of mine, among which you will easily perceive
+that some were calculated for a supposed perusal previous to your opening
+them.  I will not repeat anything contained in them, excepting that I
+desire you will send me a warm and cordial letter of thanks for Mr.
+Eliot; who has, in the most friendly manner imaginable, fixed you at his
+own borough of Liskeard, where you will be elected jointly with him,
+without the least opposition or difficulty.  I will forward that letter
+to him into Cornwall, where he now is.
+
+Now that you are to be soon a man of business, I heartily wish that you
+would immediately begin to be a man of method; nothing contributing more
+to facilitate and dispatch business, than method and order.  Have order
+and method in your accounts, in your reading, in the allotment of your
+time; in short, in everything.  You cannot conceive how much time you
+will save by it, nor how much better everything you do will be done.  The
+Duke of Marlborough did by no means spend, but he slatterned himself into
+that immense debt, which is not yet near paid off.  The hurry and
+confusion of the Duke of Newcastle do not proceed from his business, but
+from his want of method in it.  Sir Robert Walpole, who had ten times the
+business to do, was never seen in a hurry, because he always did it with
+method.  The head of a man who has business, and no method nor order, is
+properly that 'rudis indigestaque moles quam dixere chaos'.  As you must
+be conscious that you are extremely negligent and slatternly, I hope you
+will resolve not to be so for the future.  Prevail with yourself, only to
+observe good method and order for one fortnight; and I will venture to
+assure you that you will never neglect them afterward, you will find such
+conveniency and advantage arising from them.  Method is the great
+advantage that lawyers have over other people, in speaking in parliament;
+for, as they must necessarily observe it in their pleadings in the courts
+of justice, it becomes habitual to them everywhere else.  Without making
+you a compliment, I can tell you with pleasure, that order, method, and
+more activity of mind, are all that you want, to make, some day or other,
+a considerable figure in business.  You have more useful knowledge, more
+discernment of characters, and much more discretion, than is common at
+your age; much more, I am sure, than I had at that age.  Experience you
+cannot yet have, and therefore trust in the meantime to mine.  I am an
+old traveler; am well acquainted with all the bye as well as the great
+roads; I cannot misguide you from ignorance, and you are very sure I
+shall not from design.
+
+I can assure you, that you will have no opportunity of subscribing
+yourself my Excellency's, etc.  Retirement and quiet were my choice some
+years ago, while I had all my senses, and health and spirits enough to
+carry on business; but now that I have lost my hearing, and that I find
+my constitution declining daily, they are become my necessary and only
+refuge.  I know myself (no common piece of knowledge, let me tell you),
+I know what I can, what I cannot, and consequently what I ought to do.
+I ought not, and therefore will not, return to business when I am much
+less fit for it than I was when I quitted it.  Still less will I go to
+Ireland, where, from my deafness and infirmities, I must necessarily make
+a different figure from that which I once made there.  My pride would be
+too much mortified by that difference.  The two important senses of
+seeing and hearing should not only be good, but quick, in business; and
+the business of a Lord-lieutenant of Ireland (if he will do it himself)
+requires both those senses in the highest perfection.  It was the Duke of
+Dorset's not doing the business himself, but giving it up to favorites,
+that has occasioned all this confusion in Ireland; and it was my doing
+the whole myself, without either Favorite, Minister, or Mistress, that
+made my administration so smooth and quiet.  I remember, when I named the
+late Mr. Liddel for my Secretary, everybody was much surprised at it;
+and some of my friends represented to me, that he was no man of business,
+but only a very genteel, pretty young fellow; I assured them, and with
+truth, that that was the very reason why I chose him; for that I was
+resolved to do all the business myself, and without even the suspicion of
+having a minister; which the Lord-lieutenant's Secretary, if he is a man
+of business, is always supposed, and commonly with reason, to be.
+Moreover, I look upon myself now to be emeritus in business, in which I
+have been near forty years together; I give it up to you: apply yourself
+to it, as I have done, for forty years, and then I consent to your
+leaving it for a philosophical retirement among your friends and your
+books.  Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations
+of their decay; and, too often sanguinely hoping to shine on in their
+meridian, often set with contempt and ridicule.  I retired in time, 'uti
+conviva satur'; or, as Pope says still better, ERE TITTERING YOUTH SHALL
+SHOVE YOU FROM THE STAGE.  My only remaining ambition is to be the
+counsellor and minister of your rising ambition.  Let me see my own youth
+revived in you; let me be your Mentor, and, with your parts and
+knowledge, I promise you, you shall go far.  You must bring, on your
+part, activity and attention; and I will point out to you the proper
+objects for them.  I own I fear but one thing for you, and that is what
+one has generally the least reason to fear from one of your age; I mean
+your laziness; which, if you indulge, will make you stagnate in a
+contemptible obscurity all your life.  It will hinder you from doing
+anything that will deserve to be written, or from writing anything that
+may deserve to be read; and yet one or other of those two objects should
+be at least aimed at by every rational being.
+
+I look upon indolence as a sort of SUICIDE; for the man is effectually
+destroyed, though the appetites of the brute may survive.  Business by no
+means forbids pleasures; on the contrary, they reciprocally season each
+other; and I will venture to affirm, that no man enjoys either in
+perfection, that does not join both.  They whet the desire for each
+other.  Use yourself, therefore, in time to be alert and diligent in your
+little concerns; never procrastinate, never put off till to-morrow what
+you can do to-day; and never do two things at a time; pursue your object,
+be it what it will, steadily and indefatigably; and let any difficulties
+(if surmountable) rather animate than slacken your endeavors.
+Perseverance has surprising effects.
+
+I wish you would use yourself to translate, every day, only three or four
+lines, from any book, in any language, into the correctest and most
+elegant English that you can think of; you cannot imagine how it will
+insensibly form your style, and give you an habitual elegance; it would
+not take you up a quarter of an hour in a day.  This letter is so long,
+that it will hardly leave you that quarter of an hour, the day you
+receive it.  So good-night.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXCVIII
+
+LONDON, March 8, 1754
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: A great and unexpected event has lately happened in our
+ministerial world.  Mr. Pelham died last Monday of a fever and
+mortification, occasioned by a general corruption of his whole mass of
+blood, which had broke out into sores in his back.  I regret him as an
+old acquaintance, a pretty near relation, and a private man, with whom I
+have lived many years in a social and friendly way.  He meant well to the
+public; and was incorrupt in a post where corruption is commonly
+contagious.  If he was no shining, enterprising minister, he was a safe
+one, which I like better.  Very shining ministers, like the sun, are apt
+to scorch when they shine the brightest: in our constitution, I prefer
+the milder light of a less glaring minister.  His successor is not yet,
+at least publicly, 'designatus'.  You will easily suppose that many are
+very willing, and very few able, to fill that post.  Various persons are
+talked of, by different people, for it, according as their interest
+prompts them to wish, or their ignorance to conjecture.  Mr. Fox is the
+most talked of; he is strongly supported by the Duke of Cumberland.  Mr.
+Legge, the Solicitor-General, and Dr. Lee, are likewise all spoken of,
+upon the foot of the Duke of Newcastle's, and the Chancellor's interest.
+Should it be any one of the last three, I think no great alterations will
+ensue; but should Mr. Fox prevail, it would, in my opinion, soon produce
+changes by no means favorable to the Duke of Newcastle.  In the meantime,
+the wild conjectures of volunteer politicians, and the ridiculous
+importance which, upon these occasions, blockheads always endeavor to
+give themselves, by grave looks, significant shrugs, and insignificant
+whispers, are very entertaining to a bystander, as, thank God, I now am.
+One KNOWS SOMETHING, but is not yet at liberty to tell it; another has
+heard something from a very good hand; a third congratulates himself upon
+a certain degree of intimacy, which he has long had with everyone of the
+candidates, though perhaps he has never spoken twice to anyone of them.
+In short, in these sort of intervals, vanity, interest, and absurdity,
+always display themselves in the most ridiculous light.  One who has been
+so long behind the scenes as I have is much more diverted with the
+entertainment, than those can be who only see it from the pit and boxes.
+I know the whole machinery of the interior, and can laugh the better at
+the silly wonder and wild conjectures of the uninformed spectators.
+This accident, I think, cannot in the least affect your election, which
+is finally settled with your friend Mr. Eliot.  For, let who will
+prevail, I presume, he will consider me enough, not to overturn an
+arrangement of that sort, in which he cannot possibly be personally
+interested.  So pray go on with your parliamentary preparations.  Have
+that object always in your view, and pursue it with attention.
+
+I take it for granted that your late residence in Germany has made you as
+perfect and correct in German, as you were before in French, at least it
+is worth your while to be so; because it is worth every man's while to be
+perfectly master of whatever language he may ever have occasion to speak.
+A man is not himself, in a language which he does not thoroughly possess;
+his thoughts are degraded, when inelegantly or imperfectly expressed; he
+is cramped and confined, and consequently can never appear to advantage.
+Examine and analyze those thoughts that strike you the most, either in
+conversation or in books; and you will find that they owe at least half
+their merit to the turn and expression of them.  There is nothing truer
+than that old saying, 'Nihil dictum quod non prins dictum'.  It is only
+the manner of saying or writing it that makes it appear new.  Convince
+yourself that manner is almost everything, in everything; and study it
+accordingly.
+
+I am this moment informed, and I believe truly, that Mr. Fox--[Henry
+Fox, created Lord Holland, Baron of Foxley, in the year 1763]--is to
+succeed Mr. Pelham as First Commissioner of the Treasury and Chancellor
+of the Exchequer; and your friend, Mr. Yorke, of The Hague, to succeed
+Mr. Fox as Secretary at War.  I am not sorry for this promotion of Mr.
+Fox, as I have always been upon civil terms with him, and found him ready
+to do me any little services.  He is frank and gentleman-like in his
+manner: and, to a certain degree, I really believe will be your friend
+upon my account; if you can afterward make him yours, upon your own, 'tan
+mieux'.  I have nothing more to say now but Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CXCIX
+
+LONDON, March 15, 1754
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: We are here in the midst of a second winter; the cold is
+more severe, and the snow deeper, than they were in the first.
+I presume, your weather in Germany is not much more gentle and,
+therefore, I hope that you are quietly and warmly fixed at some good
+town: and will not risk a second burial in the snow, after your late
+fortunate resurrection out of it.  Your letters, I suppose, have not been
+able to make their way through the ice; for I have received none from you
+since that of the 12th of February, from Ratisbon.  I am the more uneasy
+at this state of ignorance, because I fear that you may have found some
+subsequent inconveniences from your overturn, which you might not be
+aware of at first.
+
+The curtain of the political theatre was partly drawn up the day before
+yesterday, and exhibited a scene which the public in general did not
+expect; the Duke of Newcastle was declared First Lord Commissioner of the
+Treasury, Mr. Fox Secretary of State in his room, and Mr. Henry Legge
+Chancellor of the Exchequer:  The employments of Treasurer of the Navy,
+and Secretary at War, supposed to be vacant by the promotion of Mr. Fox
+and Mr. Legge, were to be kept 'in petto' till the dissolution of this
+parliament, which will probably be next week, to avoid the expense and
+trouble of unnecessary re-elections; but it was generally supposed that
+Colonel Yorke, of The Hague, was to succeed Mr. Fox; and George
+Greenville, Mr. Legge.  This scheme, had it taken place, you are, I
+believe aware, was more a temporary expedient, for securing the elections
+of the new parliament, and forming it, at its first meeting, to the
+interests and the inclinations of the Duke of Newcastle and the
+Chancellor, than a plan of administration either intended or wished to be
+permanent.  This scheme was disturbed yesterday: Mr. Fox, who had
+sullenly accepted the seals the day before, more sullenly refused them
+yesterday.  His object was to be First Commissioner of the Treasury, and
+Chancellor of the Exchequer, and consequently to have a share in the
+election of the new parliament, and a much greater in the management of
+it when chosen.  This necessary consequence of his view defeated it; and
+the Duke of Newcastle and the Chancellor chose to kick him upstairs into
+the Secretaryship of State, rather than trust him with either the
+election or the management of the new parliament.  In this, considering
+their respective situations, they certainly acted wisely; but whether Mr.
+Fox has done so, or not, in refusing the seals, is a point which I cannot
+determine.  If he is, as I presume he is, animated with revenge, and I
+believe would not be over scrupulous in the means of gratifying it, I
+should have thought he could have done it better, as Secretary of State,
+with constant admission into the closet, than as a private man at the
+head of an opposition.  But I see all these things at too great a
+distance to be able to judge soundly of them.  The true springs and
+motives of political measures are confined within a very narrow circle,
+and known to a very few; the good reasons alleged are seldom the true
+ones: The public commonly judges, or rather guesses, wrong, and I am now
+one of that public.  I therefore recommend to you a prudent Pyrrhonism in
+all matters of state, until you become one of the wheels of them
+yourself, and consequently acquainted with the general motion, at least,
+of the others; for as to all the minute and secret springs, that
+contribute more or less to the whole machine, no man living ever knows
+them all, not even he who has the principal direction of it.  As in the
+human body, there are innumerable little vessels and glands that have a
+good deal to do, and yet escape the knowledge of the most skillful
+anatomist; he will know more, indeed, than those who only see the
+exterior of our bodies, but he will never know all.  This bustle, and
+these changes at court, far from having disturbed the quiet and security
+of your election, have, if possible, rather confirmed them; for the Duke
+of Newcastle (I must do him justice) has, in, the kindest manner
+imaginable to you, wrote a letter to Mr. Eliot, to recommend to him the
+utmost care of your election.
+
+Though the plan of administration is thus unsettled, mine, for my travels
+this summer, is finally settled; and I now communicate it to you that you
+may form your own upon it.  I propose being at Spa on the 10th or 12th of
+May, and staying there till the 10th of July.  As there will be no mortal
+there during my stay, it would be both unpleasant and unprofitable to you
+to be shut up tete-a-fete with me the whole time; I should therefore
+think it best for you not to come to me there till the last week in June.
+In the meantime, I suppose, that by the middle of April, you will think
+that you have had enough of Manheim, Munich, or Ratisbon, and that
+district.  Where would you choose to go then?  For I leave you absolutely
+your choice.  Would you go to Dresden for a month or six weeks?  That is
+a good deal out of your way, and I am not sure that Sir Charles will be
+there by that time.  Or would you rather take Bonn in your way, and pass
+the time till we meet at The Hague?  From Manheim you may have a great
+many good letters of recommendation to the court of Bonn; which court,
+and it's Elector, in one light or another, are worth your seeing.
+
+From thence, your journey to The Hague will be but a short one; and you
+would arrive there at that season of the year when The Hague is, in my
+mind, the most agreeable, smiling scene in Europe; and from The Hague you
+would have but three very easy days journey to me at Spa.  Do as you
+like; for, as I told you before, 'Ella e assolutamente padrone'.  But
+lest you should answer that you desire to be determined by me, I will
+eventually tell you my opinion.  I am rather inclined to the latter plan;
+I mean that of your coming to Bonn, staying there according as you like
+it, and then passing the remainder of your time, that is May and June, at
+The Hague.  Our connection and transactions with the, Republic of the
+United Provinces are such, that you cannot be too well acquainted with
+that constitution, and with those people.  You have established good
+acquaintances there, and you have been 'fetoie' round by the foreign
+ministers; so that you will be there 'en pais connu'.  Moreover, you have
+not seen the Stadtholder, the 'Gouvernante', nor the court there, which
+'a bon compte' should be seen.  Upon the whole, then, you cannot, in my
+opinion, pass the months of May and June more agreeably, or more
+usefully, than at The Hague.  But, however, if you have any other, plan
+that you like better, pursue it:  Only let me know what you intend to do,
+and I shall most cheerfully agree to it.
+
+The parliament will be dissolved in about ten days, and the writs for the
+election of the new one issued out immediately afterward; so that, by the
+end of next month, you may depend upon being 'Membre de la chambre
+basse'; a title that sounds high in foreign countries, and perhaps higher
+than it deserves.  I hope you will add a better title to it in your own,
+I mean that of a good speaker in parliament: you have, I am sure, all,
+the materials necessary for it, if you will but put them together and
+adorn them.  I spoke in parliament the first month I was in it, and a
+month before I was of age; and from the day I was elected, till the day
+that I spoke.  I am sure I thought nor dreamed of nothing but speaking.
+The first time, to say the truth, I spoke very indifferently as to the
+matter; but it passed tolerably, in favor of the spirit with which I
+uttered it, and the words in which I had dressed it.  I improved by
+degrees, till at last it did tolerably well.  The House, it must be
+owned, is always extremely indulgent to the two or three first attempts
+of a young speaker; and if they find any degree of common sense in what
+he says, they make great allowances for his inexperience, and for the
+concern which they suppose him to be under.  I experienced that
+indulgence; for had I not been a young member, I should certainly have
+been, as I own I deserved, reprimanded by the House for some strong and
+indiscreet things that I said.  Adieu!  It is indeed high time.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CC
+
+LONDON, March 26, 1754
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: Yesterday I received your letter of the 15th from
+Manheim, where I find you have been received in the usual gracious
+manner; which I hope you return in a GRACEFUL one.  As this is a season
+of great devotion and solemnity in all Catholic countries, pray inform
+yourself of, and constantly attend to, all their silly and pompous church
+ceremonies; one ought to know them.  I am very glad that you wrote the
+letter to Lord ------, which, in every different case that can possibly
+be supposed, was, I am sure, both a decent and a prudent step.  You will
+find it very difficult, whenever we meet, to convince me that you could
+have any good reasons for not doing it; for I will, for argument's sake,
+suppose, what I cannot in reality believe, that he has both said and done
+the worst he could, of and by you; What then?  How will you help
+yourself?  Are you in a situation to hurt him?  Certainly not; but he
+certainly is in a situation to hurt you.  Would you show a sullen,
+pouting, impotent resentment?  I hope not; leave that silly, unavailing
+sort of resentment to women, and men like them, who are always guided by
+humor, never by reason and prudence.  That pettish, pouting conduct is a
+great deal too young, and implies too little knowledge of the world, for
+one who has seen so much of it as you have.  Let this be one invariable
+rule of your conduct,--Never to show the least symptom of resentment
+which you cannot to a certain degree gratify; but always to smile, where
+you cannot strike.  There would be no living in courts, nor indeed in the
+world if one could not conceal, and even dissemble, the just causes of
+resentment, which one meets with every day in active and busy life.
+Whoever cannot master his humor enough, 'pour faire bonne mine a mauvais
+jeu', should leave the world, and retire to some hermitage, in an
+unfrequented desert.  By showing an unavailing and sullen resentment, you
+authorize the resentment of those who can hurt you and whom you cannot
+hurt; and give them that very pretense, which perhaps they wished for, of
+breaking with, and injuring you; whereas the contrary behavior would lay
+them under, the restraints of decency at least; and either shackle or
+expose their malice.  Besides, captiousness, sullenness, and pouting are
+most exceedingly illiberal and vulgar.  'Un honnete homme ne les connoit
+point'.
+
+I am extremely glad to hear that you are soon to have Voltaire at
+Manheim: immediately upon his arrival, pray make him a thousand
+compliments from me.  I admire him most exceedingly; and, whether as an
+epic, dramatic, or lyric poet, or prose-writer, I think I justly apply to
+him the 'Nil molitur inepte'.  I long to read his own correct edition of
+'Les Annales de l'Empire', of which the 'Abrege Chronologique de
+l'Histoire Universelle', which I have read, is, I suppose, a stolen and
+imperfect part; however, imperfect as it is, it has explained to me that
+chaos of history, of seven hundred years more clearly than any other book
+had done before.  You judge very rightly that I love 'le style le r et
+fleuri'.  I do, and so does everybody who has any parts and taste.  It
+should, I confess, be more or less 'fleuri', according to the subject;
+but at the same time I assert that there is no subject that may not
+properly, and which ought not to be adorned, by a certain elegance and
+beauty of style.  What can be more adorned than Cicero's Philosophical
+Works?  What more than Plato's?  It is their eloquence only that has
+preserved and transmitted them down to us through so many centuries;
+for the philosophy of them is wretched, and the reasoning part miserable.
+But eloquence will always please, and has always pleased.  Study it
+therefore; make it the object of your thoughts and attention.  Use
+yourself to relate elegantly; that is a good step toward speaking well in
+parliament.  Take some political subject, turn it in your thoughts,
+consider what may be said both for and against it, then put those
+arguments into writing, in the most correct and elegant English you can.
+For instance, a standing army, a place bill, etc.; as to the former,
+consider, on one side, the dangers arising to a free country from a great
+standing military force; on the other side, consider the necessity of a
+force to repel force with.  Examine whether a standing army, though in
+itself an evil, may not, from circumstances, become a necessary evil,
+and preventive of greater dangers.  As to the latter, consider, how far
+places may bias and warp the conduct of men, from the service of their
+country, into an unwarrantable complaisance to the court; and, on the
+other hand, consider whether they can be supposed to have that effect
+upon the conduct of people of probity and property, who are more solidly
+interested in the permanent good of their country, than they can be in an
+uncertain and precarious employment.  Seek for, and answer in your own
+mind, all the arguments that can be urged on either side, and write them
+down in an elegant style.  This will prepare you for debating, and give.
+you an habitual eloquence; for I would not give a farthing for a mere
+holiday eloquence, displayed once or twice in a session, in a set
+declamation, but I want an every-day, ready, and habitual eloquence, to
+adorn extempore and debating speeches; to make business not only clear
+but agreeable, and to please even those whom you cannot inform, and who
+do not desire to be informed.  All this you may acquire, and make
+habitual to you, with as little trouble as it cost you to dance a minuet
+as well as you do.  You now dance it mechanically and well without
+thinking of it.
+
+I am surprised that you found but one letter for me at Manheim, for you
+ought to have found four or five; there are as many lying for you at your
+banker's at Berlin, which I wish you had, because I always endeavored to
+put something into them, which, I hope, may be of use to you.
+
+When we meet at Spa, next July, we must have a great many serious
+conversations; in which I will pour out all my experience of the world,
+and which, I hope, you will trust to, more than to your own young notions
+of men and things.  You will, in time, discover most of them to have been
+erroneous; and, if you follow them long, you will perceive your error too
+late; but if you will be led by a guide, who, you are sure, does not
+mean to mislead you, you will unite two things, seldom united, in the
+same person; the vivacity and spirit of youth, with the caution and
+experience of age.
+
+Last Saturday, Sir Thomas Robinson, who had been the King's Minister at
+Vienna, was declared Secretary of State for the southern department, Lord
+Holderness having taken the northern.  Sir Thomas accepted it
+unwillingly, and, as I hear, with a promise that he shall not keep it
+long.  Both his health and spirits are bad, two very disqualifying
+circumstances for that employment; yours, I hope, will enable you, some
+time or other, to go through with it.  In all events, aim at it, and if
+you fail or fall, let it at least be said of you, 'Magnis tamen excidit
+ausis'.  Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CCI
+
+LONDON, April 5, 1754
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: I received yesterday your letter of the 20th March, from
+Manheim, with the inclosed for Mr. Eliot; it was a very proper one, and I
+have forwarded it to him by Mr. Harte, who sets out for Cornwall tomorrow
+morning.
+
+I am very glad that you use yourself to translations; and I do not care
+of what, provided you study the correctness and elegance of your style.
+The "Life of Sextus Quintus" is the best book of the innumerable books
+written by Gregorio Leti, whom the Italians, very justly, call 'Leti caca
+libro'.  But I would rather that you chose some pieces of oratory for
+your translations, whether ancient or modern, Latin or French, which
+would give you a more oratorical train of thoughts and turn of
+expression.  In your letter to me you make use of two words, which though
+true and correct English, are, however, from long disuse, become
+inelegant, and seem now to be stiff, formal, and in some degree
+scriptural; the first is the word NAMELY, which you introduce thus, YOU
+INFORM ME OF A VERY AGREEABLE PIECE OF NEWS, namely, THAT MY ELECTION
+IS
+SECURED.  Instead of NAMELY, I would always use WHICH IS, or THAT IS,
+that my-election is secured.  The other word is, MINE OWN INCLINATIONS:
+this is certainly correct before a subsequent word that begins with a
+vowel; but it is too correct, and is now disused as too formal,
+notwithstanding the hiatus occasioned by MY OWN.  Every language has its
+peculiarities; they are established by usage, and whether right or wrong,
+they must be complied with.  I could instance many very absurd ones in
+different languages; but so authorized by the 'jus et norma loquendi',
+that they must be submitted to.  NAMELY, and TO WIT, are very good words
+in themselves, and contribute to clearness more than the relatives which
+we now substitute in their room; but, however, they cannot be used,
+except in a sermon or some very grave and formal compositions.  It is
+with language as with manners they are both established by the usage of
+people of fashion; it must be imitated, it must be complied with.
+Singularity is only pardonable in old age and retirement; I may now be as
+singular as I please, but you may not.  We will, when we meet, discuss
+these and many other points, provided you will give me attention and
+credit; without both which it is to no purpose to advise either you or
+anybody else.
+
+I want to know your determination, where you intend to (if I may use that
+expression) WHILE away your time till the last week in June, when we are
+to meet at Spa; I continue rather in the opinion which I mentioned to you
+formerly, in favor of The Hague; but however, I have not the least
+objection to Dresden, or to any other place that you may like better.
+If you prefer the Dutch scheme, you take Treves and Coblentz in your way,
+as also Dusseldorp: all which places I think you have not yet seen.  At
+Manheim you may certainly get good letters of recommendation to the
+courts of the two Electors of Treves and Cologne, whom you are yet
+unacquainted with; and I should wish you to know them all; for, as I have
+often told you, 'olim haec meminisse juvabit'.  There is an utility in
+having seen what other people have seen, and there is a justifiable pride
+in having seen what others have not seen.  In the former case, you are
+equal to others; in the latter, superior.  As your stay abroad will not
+now be very long, pray, while it lasts, see everything and everybody you
+can, and see them well, with care and attention.  It is not to be
+conceived of what advantage it is to anybody to have seen more things,
+people, and countries, than other people in general have; it gives them a
+credit, makes them referred to, and they become the objects of the
+attention of the company.  They are not out in any part of polite
+conversation; they are acquainted with all the places, customs, courts,
+and families that are likely to be mentioned; they are, as Monsieur de
+Maupertuis justly observes, 'de tous les pays, comme les savans, sont de
+tous les tems'.  You have, fortunately, both those advantages: the only
+remaining point is 'de savoir les faire valoir', for without that one may
+as well not have them.  Remember that very true maxim of La Bruyere's,
+'Qu'on ne vaut dans se monde que ce qu'on veut valoir'.  The knowledge of
+the world will teach you to what degree you ought to show 'que vous
+valez'.  One must by no means, on one hand, be indifferent about it; as,
+on the other, one must not display it with affectation, and in an
+overbearing manner, but, of the two, it is better to show too much than
+too little.  Adieu.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER CCII
+
+BATH, November 27, 1754
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND: I heartily congratulate you upon the loss of your
+political maidenhead, of which I have received from others a very good
+account.  I hear that you were stopped for some time in your career; but
+recovered breath, and finished it very well.  I am not surprised, nor
+indeed concerned, at your accident; for I remember the dreadful feeling
+of that situation in myself; and as it must require a most uncommon share
+of impudence to be unconcerned upon such an occasion, I am not sure that
+I am not rather glad you stopped.  You must therefore now think of
+hardening yourself by degrees, by using yourself insensibly to the sound
+of your own voice, and to the act (trifling as it seems) of rising up and
+sitting down.  Nothing will contribute so much to this as committee work
+of elections at night, and of private bills in the morning.  There,
+asking short questions, moving for witnesses to be called in, and all
+that kind of small ware, will soon fit you to set up for yourself.  I am
+told that you are much mortified at your accident, but without reason;
+pray, let it rather be a spur than a curb to you.  Persevere, and, depend
+upon it, it will do well at last.  When I say persevere, I do not mean
+that you should speak every day, nor in every debate.  Moreover, I would
+not advise you to speak again upon public matters for some time, perhaps
+a month or two; but I mean, never lose view of that great object; pursue
+it with discretion, but pursue it always.  'Pelotez en attendant partie'.
+You know I have always told you that speaking in public was but a knack,
+which those who apply to the most will succeed in the best.  Two old
+members, very good judges, have sent me compliments upon this occasion;
+and have assured me that they plainly find it will do; though they
+perceived, from that natural confusion you were in, that you neither said
+all, nor perhaps what you intended.  Upon the whole, you have set out
+very well, and have sufficient encouragement to go on.  Attend;
+therefore, assiduously, and observe carefully all that passes in the
+House; for it is only knowledge and experience that can make a debater.
+But if you still want comfort, Mrs.------- I hope, will administer it to
+you; for, in my opinion she may, if she will, be very comfortable; and
+with women, as with speaking in parliament, perseverance will most
+certainly prevail sooner or later.
+
+What little I have played for here, I have won; but that is very far from
+the considerable sum which you heard of.  I play every evening, from
+seven till ten, at a crown whist party, merely to save my eyes from
+reading or writing for three hours by candle-light.  I propose being in
+town the week after next, and hope to carry back with me much more health
+than I brought down here.  Good-night.
+
+[Mr. Stanhope being returned to England, and seeing his father almost
+every day, is the occasion of an interruption of two years in their
+correspondence.]
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+According as their interest prompts them to wish
+Acquainted with books, and an absolute stranger to men
+Affectation of singularity or superiority
+All have senses to be gratified
+Bolingbroke
+Business by no means forbids pleasures
+Clamorers triumph
+Doing anything that will deserve to be written
+Ears to hear, but not sense enough to judge
+ERE TITTERING YOUTH SHALL SHOVE YOU FROM THE STAGE
+Frederick
+Good manners are the settled medium of social life
+Good reasons alleged are seldom the true ones
+Holiday eloquence
+I know myself (no common piece of knowledge, let me tell you)
+Indolence
+INTOLERATION in religious, and inhospitality in civil matters
+Kick him upstairs
+King Louis XIV
+Look upon indolence as a sort of SUICIDE
+Manner is almost everything, in everything
+Many are very willing, and very few able
+Perseverance has surprising effects
+Pettish, pouting conduct is a great deal too young
+Reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom does
+Rendering Jews capable of being naturalized
+Rochefoucault
+Singularity is only pardonable in old age
+Smile, where you cannot strike
+To govern mankind, one must not overrate them
+Too like, and too exact a picture of human nature
+Vanity, interest, and absurdity, always display
+Warm and young thanks, not old and cold ones
+Writing anything that may deserve to be read
+Young men are as apt to think themselves wise enough
+Young people are very apt to overrate both men and things
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Letters to His Son, 1753-54
+by The Earl of Chesterfield
+
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