 London, March 29, Old Style, 1750. My dear friend, you are now, I suppose, at Naples, in a new scene of virtue, examining all the curiosities of Herculaneum, watching the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, and surveying the magnificent churches and public buildings by which Naples is distinguished. You have a court there into the bargain, which I hope you frequent and attend to. Polite manners, a versatility of mind, a complacence even to enemies, and the volto schiolto, with the pensieri strati, are only to be learned at courts, and must be well learned by whoever would either shine or thrive in them. Though they do not change the nature, they smooth and soften the manners of mankind. Vigilance, dexterity, and flexibility supply the place of natural force, and it is the ableest mind, not the strongest body, that prevails there. Monsieur and Madame Fugliani will, I am sure, show you all the politeness of courts, for I know no better bred people than they are. Domesticate yourself there while you stay at Naples, and lay aside the English coldness and formality. You have also a letter to Comte Mahoney, whose house I hope you frequent, as it is the resort of the best company. His sister, Madame Bochli, is now here, and had I known of your going so soon to Naples, I would have got you, ex Abundanti, a letter from her to her brother. The conversation of the moderns in the evening is full as necessary for you as that of the ancients in the morning. You would do well while you are at Naples to read some very short history of that kingdom. It has had a great variety of masters, and has occasioned many wars, the general history of which will enable you to ask many proper questions, and to receive useful informations in return. Inquire into the manner and form of that government, for Constitution it has none, being an absolute one, but the most absolute governments have certain customs and forms, which are more or less observed by their respective tyrants. In China it is the fashion for the emperors, absolute as they are, to govern with justice and equity, as in the other Oriental monarchies it is the custom to govern by violence and cruelty. The King of France, as absolute in fact as any of them, is by custom only more gentle, for I know of no constitutional bar to his will. England is now the only monarchy in the world that can properly be said to have a Constitution, for the people's rights and liberties are secured by laws, and I cannot reckon Sweden and Poland to be monarchies, those two kings having little more to say than the Doge of Venice. I do not presume to say anything of the Constitution of the Empire to you, who are just Béryorsum Germanicorum Facil-princepts. When you write to me, which by the way you do pretty seldom, tell me rather whom you have seen than what you see. Inform me of your evening transactions and acquaintances, where and how you pass your evenings, what people of learning you have made acquaintance with, and if you will trust me with so important an affair, what bell passion inflames you. I interest myself in what personally concerns you most, and this is a very critical year in your life. To talk like a virtuoso, your canvas is, I think, a good one, and Raphael Hart has drawn the outlines admirably. Nothing is now wanting but the colouring of Titian, and the graces, the morbideza of Guido, but that is a great deal. You must get them soon, or you will never get them at all. Per la lingua italiana sono sicuro cele né addesso professore, asseniotale ceo non addesca, delle altra cosa in checa lingus, si e non. Adio. CHESTERFIELD'S LUTTERS TO HIS SON, read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. LETTER 110 London, April 26, old style, 1750. My dear friend, as your journey to Paris approaches, and as that period will, one way or another, be of infinite consequence to you, my letters will hence forward be principally calculated for that meridian. You will be left there to your own discretion instead of Mr. Hart's, and you will allow me, I am sure, to distrust a little the discretion of eighteen. You will find in the academy a number of young fellows much less discreet than yourself. These will be your acquaintances, but look about you first, and inquire into their respective characters, before you form any connections among them. And, Cetrus Paribus, single out those of the most considerable rank in family. Show them a distinguishing attention, by which means you will get into their respective houses, and keep the best company. All those young French fellows are excessively étourdi. Be upon your guard against scrapes and quarrels. Have no corporal pleasantries with them. No jeu de main, no coup de chambrière, which frequently bring on quarrels. Be as lively as they if you please, but at the same time be a little wiser than they. As to letters, you will find most of them ignorant. Do not reproach them with that ignorance, nor make them feel your superiority. It is not their faults. They are all bred up for the army. But on the other hand, do not allow their ignorance and idleness to break in upon those morning hours which you may be able to allot to your serious studies. No breakfastings with them, which consume a great deal of time. But tell them, not magisterially and sententiously, that you will read two or three hours in the morning, and that for the rest of the day you are very much at their service. Though by the way I hope you will keep wiser company in the evenings. I must insist upon your never going to what is called the English coffee-house at Paris, which is the resort of all the scrub English, and also of the fugitive and a tainted Scotch and Irish. Party quarrels and drunken squabbles are very frequent there, and I do not know a more degrading place in all Paris. Coffee-houses and taverns are by no means creditable at Paris. Be cautiously upon your guard against the infinite number of fine-dressed and fine-spoken Chevaliers d'Industrie and Adventurier, which swarm at Paris, and keep everybody civilly at arm's length, of whose real character or rank you are not previously informed. Monsieur le Comte, or Monsieur le Savallier, in a handsome laced coat, et Tremblayen me, accosts you at the play, or some other public place. He conceives at first sight an infinite regard for you. He sees that you are a stranger of the first distinction. He offers you his services, and wishes nothing more ardently than to contribute, as far as may be in his little power, to procure you les arguments de Paris. He is acquainted with some ladies of condition, qui preffront une petite société agréable, et des petits supers amiable d'honne et chant, aux tumours et à la dissipation de Paris. And he will, with the greatest pleasure imaginable, have the honour of introducing you to those ladies of quality. Well, if you were to accept of this kind offer and go with him, you would find, au trossiem, a handsome, painted strumpet, in a tarnished silver or gold second-hand robe, playing a sham party at cards for livres, with three or four sharpers well dressed enough, and dignified by the titles of Marquis, Comte, and Savallier. The lady receives you in the most polite and gracious manner, and with all those compliments to routine, which every French woman has equally. Though she loves retirement, and shuns le grandement, yet she confesses herself obliged to the Marquis for having procured her so inestimable, so accomplished in acquaintance as herself. But her concern is how to amuse you, for she never suffers play at her house for above a livre, if you can amuse yourself with that low play till supper, à la bonne heure. Accordingly you sit down to that little play, at which the good company takes care that you shall win fifteen or sixteen livres, which gives them an opportunity of celebrating both your good luck and your good play. Supper comes up, and a good one it is, upon the strength of your being able to pay for it. Le Marquis en fait les honneurs au mieux, talks sentiments moure et moelle, interlarded with enjouement, and accompanied with some oblique ogles, which bid you not despair in time. After supper, Ferro, Lanskinet, or Kans, happen accidentally to be mentioned. The Marquis exclaims against it, and vows she will not suffer it. But at last is prevailed upon by being assured, que ce ne sera que pour de rien. Then the wished foremoment is come. The operation begins. You are cheated at best of all the money in your pocket, and if you stay late, very probably robbed of your watch and snuff-box, possibly murdered for greater security. This I can assure you is not an exaggerated, but a literal description of what happens every day to some raw and inexperienced stranger at Paris. Remember to receive all these civil gentlemen who take such a fancy to you at first sight, very coldly, and take care always to be previously engaged whatever party they propose to you. You may happen sometimes, in very great and good companies, to meet with some dexterous gentleman, who may be very desirous, and also very sure to win your money, if they can but engage you to play with them. Or lay it down as an invariable rule never to play with men, but only with women of fashion at low play, or with women and men mixed. But at the same time, whenever you are asked to play deeper than you would, do not refuse it gravely and sententiously, alleging the folly of staking what would be very inconvenient to one to lose, against what one does not want to win. But parry those invitations ludicrously, et en bandinant. Say that if you were sure to lose, you might possibly play, but as you may as well win, you dread l'embarasse de riches, ever since you have seen what an encumbrance they were to pour Harlequin, and that therefore you are determined never to venture the winning above too louis-a-day. This sort of light, trifling way of declining invitations to vice and folly, is more becoming your age, and at the same time more effectual, than grave philosophical refusals. A young fellow who seems to have no will of his own, and who does everything that is asked of him, is called very good-natured, but at the same time is thought a very silly young fellow. Act wisely upon solid principles, and from true motives, but keep them to yourself, and never talk sententiously. When you are invited to drink, say that you wish you could, but that so little makes you both drunk and sick, que le jeu me n'en parle le chandel. Pray show great attention, and make your court to Monsieur de la Guernière. He is well with Prince Charles, and many people of the first distinction at Paris. His commendations will raise your character there, not to mention that his favour will be of use to you in the academy itself. For the reasons which I have mentioned to you in my last, I would have you be intern in the academy for the first six months. But after that I promise you that you shall have lodgings of your own, dans une hôtel gagnée, if in the meantime I hear well of you, and that you frequent and are esteemed in the best French companies. You want nothing now, thank God, but exterior advantages, that last polish, that tournure du monde, and those graces which are so necessary to adorn, and give efficacy to, the most solid merit. They are only to be acquired in the best companies, and better in the best French companies than in any other. You will not want opportunities, for I shall send you letters that will establish you in the most distinguished companies, not only of the Beaumont, but of the Beaux Esprit, too. Dedicate therefore, I beg of you, that whole year to your advantage in final improvement, and do not be diverted from those objects by idle dissipations, low seduction, or bad example. After that year do whatever you please. I will interfere no longer in your conduct, for I am sure both you and I shall be safe then. Adieu. End of Section 79. Read by Professor Heather Mby. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 80 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the Public Domain. Letter 111. London. April 30. Old Style. 1750. My dear friend. Mr. Hart, who in all his letters gives you some dash of Panagyric, told me in his last a thing that pleases me extremely, which was that at Rome you had constantly preferred the established Italian assemblies to the English Conventacles set up against them by dissenting English ladies. That shows sense, and that you know what you are sent abroad for. It is of much more consequence to know the mores, multorum, ominum, than the herbes. They continue this judicious conduct wherever you go, especially at Paris, where instead of thirty you will find above three hundred English, herding together and conversing with no one French body. The life of L'Émilore Anglois is regularly, or if you will, irregularly this. As soon as they rise, which is very late, they breakfast together, to the other loss of two good morning hours. Then they go by coachfuls to the Palais, the Al-Baleid and Notre-Dame, from thence to the English coffee-house, where they make up their tavern party for dinner. From dinner, where they drink quick, they adjourn in clusters to the play, where they crowd up the stage, dressed up in very fine clothes, very ill-made by a scotch or Irish tailor. From the play to the tavern again, where they get very drunk, and where they either quarrel among themselves or sally forth, commit some ride in the streets, and are taken up by the watch. Those who do not speak French before they go are sure to learn none there. Their tender vows are addressed to their Irish lawn-dress, unless by chance some itinerant Englishwoman eloped from her husband, or her creditors, defrauds her of them. Thus they return home more petulant, but not more informed, than when they left it, and show, as they think their improvement by effectively both speaking and dressing in broken French, hunk to Romane Caveato. Divert yourself while you are in France entirely with the French. Improve yourself with the old, divert yourself with the young, conform cheerfully to their customs, even to their little follies, but not to their vices. Do not, however, remonstrate or preach against them, for remonstrances do not suit with your age. In French companies in general you will not find much learning. Therefore take care not to brandish yours in their faces. All hate those who make them feel their own inferiority. Conceal all your learning carefully, and reserve it for the company of les gens d'église, or les gens de robe, and even then let them rather extort it from you than find you over-willing to draw it. You are then thought, from that seeming unwillingness, to have still more knowledge than it may be you really have, and with the additional merit of modesty into the bargain. A man who talks of, or even hints at, his bon fortune is seldom believed, or if believed much blamed, whereas a man who conceals with care is often supposed to have more than he has, and his reputation of discretion gets him others. It is just so with a man of learning. If he affects to show it, it is questioned, and he is reckoned only superficial. But if afterwards it appears that he really has it, he is pronounced a penant. Real merit of any kind, ubi est non potest du salari, it will be discovered, and nothing can depreciate it but a man's exhibiting it himself. It may not always be rewarded as it ought, but it will always be known. You will in general find the women of the Beaumond at Paris more instructed than the men, who are bred up singly for the army, and thrown into it at twelve or thirteen years old. But then that sort of education, which makes them ignorant of books, gives them a great knowledge of the world, an easy address, and polite manners. Fashion is more tyrannical at Paris than in any other place in the world. It governs even more absolutely than their king, which is saying a great deal. The least revolt against it is punished by prescription. You must observe and conform to all the minutiae of it, if you will be in fashion there yourself, and if you are not in fashion you are nobody. Get therefore at all events into the company of those men and women qui donnent le temps, and though at first you should be admitted upon that shining theatre only as a persona muta, persist, persevere, and you will soon have a part given you. Take great care never to tell in one company what you see or hear in another, much less to divert the present company at the expense of the last, but let discretion and secrecy be known parts of your character. They will carry you much further and much safer than more shining talents. Be upon your guard against quarrels at Paris. The manner is extremely nice there, though the asserting of it is exceedingly penile. Therefore, point de mauvaise pleasantries, point de jeux de mains, et point de rayons piquants. Paris is the place in the world where, if you please, you may the best unite the utile and the dossier. Even your pleasures will be your improvements if you take them with the people of the place, and in high life. From what you have hitherto done everywhere else I have just reason to believe that you will do everything that you ought at Paris. Remember that it is your decisive moment. Whatever you do there will be known to thousands here, and your character there, whatever it is, will get before you here. You will meet with it at London. May you and I both have reason to rejoice at that meeting. Adieu. My dear friend, at your age the love of pleasantries is extremely natural, and the enjoyment of them not unbecoming. But the danger at your age is mistaking the object and setting out wrong in the pursuit. The character of a man of pleasure dazzles young eyes. They do not see their way to it distinctly and fall into vice and profligacy. I remember a strong instance of this a great many years ago. A young fellow, determined to shine as a man of pleasure, was at the play called The Libertine Destroyed, a translation of Le Fastan de Pierre of Molière's. He was so struck with what he thought the fine character of the Libertine that he swore he would be the Libertine Destroyed. Some friends asked him whether he had not better content himself with being only the Libertine, but without being destroyed, to which he answered with great warmth, no, for that being destroyed was the perfection of the whole. This extravagant, as it seems in this light, is really the name of many an unfortunate young fellow, who, captivated by the name of pleasures, rushes indiscriminately and without taste into them all, and is finally destroyed. I am not stoically advising nor personically preaching to you to be a stoic at your age, far from it. I am pointing out to you the paths to pleasures, and am endeavouring only to quicken and heighten them for you. Enjoy pleasures, but let them be your own, and then you will taste them. But adopt none, trust to nature for genuine ones. The pleasures that you will feel you must earn. The man who gives himself up to all feels none sensibly. Sardinopolis, I am convinced, never felt any in his life. Those only who join serious occupations with pleasures feel either as they should do. Alcibiades, though addicted to the most shameful excesses, gave some time to philosophy, and some to business. Julius Caesar joined business with pleasure so properly that they mutually assisted each other, and though he was the husband of all the wives at Rome, he found time to be one of the best scholars, almost the best orator, and absolutely the best general there. An uninterrupted life of pleasures is as insipid as contemptible. Some hours given every day to serious business must wet both the mind and the senses to enjoy those of pleasure. A surfeited glutton, an emaciated sought, and an innervated rotten whore-master never enjoy the pleasures to which they devote themselves, but they are only so many sacrifices to false gods. The pleasures of low life are all of this mistaken, merely sensual and disgraceful nature, whereas those of high life and in good company, though possibly in themselves not more moral, are more delicate, more refined, less dangerous, and less disgraceful, and in the common course of things not reckoned disgraceful at all. In short, pleasure must not, nay, cannot be the business of a man of sense and character, but it may be and is his relief, his reward. It is particularly so with regard to the women, who have the yet most contempt for those men, that having no character nor consideration with their own sex, frivolously pass their whole time in rule and at toilette. They look upon them as their lumber, and remove them whenever they can get better furniture. Women choose their favourites more by the ear than by any of their other senses or even their understanding. The man whom they hear the most commended by the men will always be the best received by them. Such a conquest flatters their vanity, and vanity is their universal, if not their strongest passion. A distinguished, shining character is irresistible with them. They crowd to, nay, they even quarrel for the danger in hopes of the triumph. Though, by the way, to use a vulgar expression, she who conquers only catches a tartar, and becomes the slave of her captive. Mais c'est la lue refaire. Divide your time between useful occupations and elegant pleasures. The morning seems to belong to study, business or serious conversations with men of learning and figure, not that I exclude an occasional hour at a toilette. From sitting down to dinner the proper business of the day is pleasure, unless real business, which must never be postponed for pleasure, happens accidentally to interfere. In good company the pleasures of the table are always carried to a certain point of delicacy and gratification, but never to excess and riot. Plays, operas, balls, suppers, gay conversations in polite and cheerful companies, properly conclude the evenings, not to mention the tender looks that you may direct and the size that you may offer, upon these several occasions, to some propitious or unpropitious female deity, whose character and manners will neither disgrace nor corrupt yours. This is the life of a man of real sense and pleasure. And by this distribution of your time and choice of your pleasures, you will be equally qualified for the busy or the beaumonde. You see I am not rigid, and do not require that you and I should be of the same age. What I say to you, therefore, should have the more weight, as coming from a friend, not a father. But low company, and their low vices, their indecent riots and profligacy, I never will bear nor forgive. I have lately received two volumes of treaties in German and Latin from Hawkins, with your orders under your own hand, to take care of them for you, which orders I shall most dutifully and punctually obey, and they wait for you in my library, together with your great collection of rare books, which your mamma sent me upon removing from her old house. I hope you not only keep up, but improve in your German, for it will be of great use to you when you come into business, and the more so, as you will be almost the only Englishman who can either speak or understand it. Pray speak it constantly to all Germans, wherever you meet them, and you will meet multitudes of them at Paris. Is Italian now become easy and familiar to you? Can you speak it with the same fluency that you can speak German? You cannot conceive what an advantage it will give you in negotiations to possess Italian, German, and French perfectly, so as to understand all the force and finesse of those three languages. If two men of equal talents negotiate together, he who best understands the language in which the negotiation is carried on will infallibly get the better of the other. The signification and force of one single word is often of great consequence in a treaty, and even in a letter. For the graces, for without them, Agni fattica Ivana. Adieu. End of Section 81. Read by Professor Heather Mby. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 82 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter 113. London, May 17th, Old Style, 1750. My dear friend. Your apprenticeship is near out, and you are soon to set up for yourself. That approaching moment is a critical one for you, and an anxious one for me. A tradesman who would succeed in his way must begin by establishing a character of integrity in good manners. Without the former, nobody will go to his shop at all. Without the latter, nobody will go there twice. This rule does not exclude the fair arts of trade. He may sell his goods at the best price he can within certain bounds. He may avail himself of the humor, the whims, and the fantastical taste of his customers. But what he warrants to be good must really be so. What he seriously asserts must be true, or his first fraudulent profits will soon end in a bankruptcy. It is the same in higher life and in the great business of the world. A man who does not solidly establish and really deserve a character of truth, probity, good manners, and good morals, at his first setting out in the world, may impose and shine like a meteor for a very short time, but will very soon vanish and be extinguished with contempt. People easily pardon in young men the common irregularities of the senses, but they do not forgive the least vice of the heart. The heart never grows better by age. I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young nave will only be a greater nave as he grows older. But should a bad young heart, accompanied with a good head, which by the way very seldom is the case, really reform in a more advanced age, from a consciousness of its folly, as well as of its guilt, such a conversion would only be thought prudential and political, but never sincere. I hope in God and I verily believe that you want no moral virtue. But the possession of all the moral virtues in Acto Primo, as the logicians call it, is not sufficient. You must have them in Acto Secundo, too. Nay, that is not sufficient, neither. You must have the reputation of them also. Your character in the world must be built upon that solid foundation, or it will soon fall, and upon your own head. You cannot therefore be too careful, too nice, too scrupulous in establishing this character at first, upon which your whole depends. Let no conversation, no example, no fashion, no bonemos, no silly desire of seeming to be above, what most knaves and many fools call prejudices, ever tempt you to avow, excuse, extenuate, or laugh at the least breach of morality. But show upon all occasions, and take all occasions to show, a detestation and abhorrence of it. There though young you ought to be strict, and there only, while young, it becomes you to be strict and severe. But there, too, spare the persons while you lash the crimes. All this relates, as you easily judge, to the vices of the heart, such as lying, fraud, envy, malice, detraction, etc., and I do not extend it to the little frailties of youth, flowing from high spirits and warm blood. It would ill-become you at your age to declaim against them, and sententiously censure a gallantry, and accidental excess of the table, a frolic, and inadvertency. No, keep as free from them yourself as you can, but say nothing against them and others. They certainly mend by time, often by reason, and a man's worldly character is not affected by them, provided it be pure in all other respects. To now come to a point of much less, but yet a very great consequence at your first setting out. Be extremely upon your guard against vanity, the common failing of inexperienced youth, but particularly against the kind of vanity that dubs a man a coxcomb, a character which, once acquired, is more indelible than that of the priesthood. It is not to be imagined by how many different ways vanity defeats its own purposes. One man decides peremptorily upon every subject, betrays his ignorance upon many, and shows a disgusting presumption upon the rest. Another desires to appear successful among the women. He hints at the encouragement he has received, from those of the most distinguished rank and beauty, and intimates a particular connection with some one. If it is true, it is ungenerous. If false, it is infamous. But in either case he destroys the reputation he wants to get. Some flatter their vanity by little extraneous objects which have not the least relation to themselves, such as being descended from, related to, or acquainted with, people of distinguished merit and eminent characters. They talk perpetually of their grandfather such a one, their uncle such a one, and their intimate friend, Mr. such a one, with whom possibly they are hardly acquainted. But admitting it all to be as they would have it, what then? Have they the more merit for those accidents? Certainly not. On the contrary, their taking up adventitious proves their want of intrinsic merit. A rich man never borrows. Take this rule for granted, as a never-failing one, that you must never seem to affect the character in which you have a mind to shine. Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise. The affectation of courage will make even a brave man pass only for a bully, as the affectation of wit will make a man of parts pass for a coxcomb. By this modesty I do not mean timidity and awkward bashfulness. On the contrary, be inwardly firm and steady. Know your own value whatever it may be, and act upon that principle, but take great care to let nobody discover that you do know your own value. Whatever real merit you have other people will discover, and people always magnify their own discoveries as they lessen those of others. For God's sake revolve all these things seriously in your thoughts before you launch out alone into the ocean of Paris. Recollect the observations that you have yourself made upon mankind. Bear and connect them with my instructions, and then act systematically and consequentially from them, not au jour la journée. Lay your little plan now, which you will hear after, extend and improve by your own observations, and by the advice of those who can never mean to mislead you. I mean Mr. Hart and myself. CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS to his son Red for LibriVox.org into the public domain. LETTER 114 London, May 24, Old Style, 1750 My dear friend, I received yesterday your letter of the Seventh New Style from Naples, to which place I find you have travelled classically critically, and avocoso. You did right, for whatever is worth seeing at all is worth seeing well and better than most people see it. It is a poor and frivolous excuse, when anything curious is talked of that one has seen, to say, I saw it but really I did not much mind it. Why did they go to see it, if they would not mind it? Or why not mind it when they saw it? Now that you are at Naples you pass part of your time there, and on a tombe, da garbato cavriere, in the court of the best companies. I am told that strangers are received with the utmost hospitality at Prince Euse, que lui il faut bon cher, et que madame la princesse d'en cher un tir, mais que sa chair est plus que réservie ou mortifiée miem, which in plain English means that she is not only tender but rotten. If this be true, as I am pretty sure it is, one may say to her in a little sense, ju venum cu protis public scura. Mr. Hart informs me that you are clothed in sumptuous apparel, a young fellow should be so especially abroad, where fine clothes are so generally the fashion. Next to their being fine they should be well made, and worn easily, for a man is only the less genteel for a fine coat. If in wearing it he shows regard for it, and is not as easy in it as if it were a plain one. I thank you for your drawing, which I am impatient to see, and which I shall hang up in a new gallery that I am building at Blackheath, and very fond of. But I am still more impatient for another copy, which I wonder I have not yet received. I mean the copy of your countenance. I believe, were that a whole length, it would still fall a good deal shorter of the dimensions of the drawing after Dominincino, which you say is about eight feet high, and I take you as well as myself to be of the family of the picolomini. Mr. Bathurst tells me that he thinks you rather taller than I am. If so you may very possibly get up to five feet eight inches, which I would compound for, though I would wish you five feet ten. In truth what do I not wish you that has a tendency to perfection? I say a tendency only, for absolute perfection is not in human nature, so that it would be idle to wish it. But I am very willing to compound for your coming nearer to perfection than the generality of your contemporaries, without a compliment to you. I think you bid fair for that. Mr. Hart affirms, and if it were consistent with his character would, I believe, swear, that you have no vices of the heart. You have undoubtedly a stock of both ancient and modern learning, which I will venture to say nobody of your age has, and which must now daily increase. Do what you will. What then do you want toward that practicable degree of perfection which I wish you? Nothing but the knowledge, the turn, and the manners of the world. I mean the Beaumont. These it is impossible that you can yet have quite right. They are not given, they must be learned. But then on the other hand it is impossible not to acquire them if one has a mind to them, for they are acquired insensibly by keeping good company, if one has with the least attention to their characters and manners. Every man becomes to a certain degree what the people he generally converses with are. He catches their air, their manners, and even their way of thinking. If he observes with attention he will catch them soon, but if he does not he will at long run contract them insensibly. I know nothing in the world but poetry that is not to be acquired by application and care. The sum total of this is a very comfortable one for you, as it plainly amounts to this in your favour, that you now want nothing but what even your pleasures, if they are liberal ones, will teach you. I congratulate both you and myself upon your being in such a situation, that accepting your exercises, nothing is now wanting but pleasure to complete you. Take them, but as I am sure you will, with people of the first fashion, wherever you are, and the business is done. Your exercises at Paris, which I am sure you will attend to, will supple and fashion your body, and the company you will keep their will, with some degree of observation on your part, soon give you their air, address, manners, in short, le temps de la bonne compagnie. Let not these considerations, however, make you vain. They are only between you and me, but as they are very comfortable ones, they may justly give you a manly assurance, a firmness, a steadiness, without which a man can neither be well bred, or in any light appear to advantage, or really what he is. They may justly remove all, timidity, awkward bashfulness, low diffidence of oneself, and mean, abject complacence to every or anybody's opinion. La brouillère says very truly, On ne vaut dans ce monde que ce que l'on vaut valoir. It is a right principle to proceed upon in the world, taking care only to guard against the appearances and outward symptoms of vanity. Your whole, then, you see, turns upon the company you keep for the future. I have laid you in a variety of the best at Paris, where at your arrival you will find a cargo of letters to very different sorts of people, as beaux esprits, savants et belles d'hommes. These, if you will frequent them, will form you, not only by their examples and vice and admonitions in private, as I have desired them to do, and consequently add to what you have the only one thing now needful. Pray tell me what Italian books you have read, and whether that language is now become familiar to you. Read Ariosto and Tasso through, and then you will have read all the Italian poets who, in my opinion, are worth reading. In all events, when you get to Paris, take a good Italian master to read Italian with you three times a week, not only to keep what you have already, which you would otherwise forget, but also to perfect you in the rest. It is a great pleasure, as well as a great advantage, to be able to speak to people of all nations and well in their own language. Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it and persevere will come much near it, than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable. Magnes tamon exidid osis is a degree of praise which will always attend a noble and shining temerity, and a much better sign in a young fellow than Cerperi humi tutis niminium temidus cprosele, for men as well as women, born to be controlled, stooped to the forward and the bold. A man who sets out in the world with real timidity and diffidence has not an equal chance for it. He will be discouraged, put by, or trampled upon. But to succeed, a man, especially a young one, should have inward firmness, steadiness, and intrepidity, with exterior modesty and seeming diffidence. He must modestly, but resolutely, assert his own rights and privileges. Suavite in moto, but fortifie in re. He should have an apparent frankness and openness, but with inward caution and closeness. All these things will come to you by frequenting and observing good company. And by good company, I mean that sort of company which is called good company by everybody of that place. When all this is over, we shall meet, and then we will talk over, te-ta-tet, the various little finishing strokes which conversation and acquaintance occasionally suggest, and which cannot be methodically written. Tell Mr. Hart that I have received his two letters of the second and eighth new style, which as soon as I have received a third I will answer. Adieu, my dear. I find you will do. End of Section 83. Read by Professor Heather Mby. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibreVox.org. Section 84 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibreVox.org into the public domain. Letter 115. London, June 5, Old Style, 1750. My dear friend, I have received your picture which I have long waited for with impatience. I wanted to see your countenance from whence I am very apt, as I believe most people are, to form some general opinion of the mind. If the painter has taken you as well as he has done Mr. Hart, for his picture is by far the most like I ever saw in my life, I draw good conclusions from your countenance, which has both spirit and finesse in it. In bulk you are pretty well increased since I saw you. If your height has not increased in proportion, I desire that you will make haste to complete it. Seriously, I believe that your exercises at Paris will make you shoot up to a good size. Your legs by all accounts seem to promise it. Dancing accepted, the wholesome part is the best part of those academical exercises. Il degressant le rhum. Apropos of exercises, I have prepared everything for your reception at Monsieur de Guerinieres, and your room, et cetera, will be ready at your arrival. I am sure you must be sensible how much better it will be for you to be intern in the Academy for the first six or seven months at least, than to be in Hotel Garnier, at some distance from it, and obliged to go to it every morning, let the weather be what it will, not to mention the loss of time, too. Besides by living and boarding in the Academy you will make an acquaintance with half the young fellows of fashion at Paris, and in a very little while be looked upon as one of them in all French companies, an advantage that has never yet happened to any one Englishman that I have known. I am sure you do not suppose that the difference of the expense, which is but a trifle, has any weight with me in this resolution. You have the French language so perfectly, and you will acquire the French tournure so soon, that I do not know anybody likely to pass their time so well at Paris as yourself. Our young countrymen have generally too little French and too bad address, either to present themselves, or be well received in the best French companies. And as a proof of it, there is no one instance of an Englishman's having ever been suspected of a gallantry with a French woman of condition, though every French woman of condition is more than suspected of having a gallantry. But they take up with the disgraceful and dangerous commerce of prostitutes, actresses, dancing women, and that sort of trash. Though if they had common address, better achievements would be extremely easy. Un arrangement, which is in plain English a gallantry, is at Paris as necessary a part of a woman of fashion's establishment as her house, stable, coach, etc. A young fellow must therefore be a very awkward one to be reduced to, or of a very singular taste, to prefer drabs and danger to a commerce, in the course of the world not disgraceful, with a woman of health, education, and rank. Nothing sinks a young man into low company, both of women and men, so surely as timidity and diffidence of himself. If he thinks that he shall not, he may depend upon it he will not please. But with proper endeavors to please, and a degree of persuasion that he shall, it is almost certain that he will. How many people does one meet with everywhere, who with very moderate parts and very little knowledge, push themselves pretty far, simply by being sanguine, enterprising, and persevering? They will take no denial for man or woman. Difficulties do not discourage them. Repulsed twice or thrice they rally, they charge again, and nine times in ten prevail at last. The same means will much sooner and more certainly attain the same ends, with your parts and knowledge. You have a fun to be sanguine upon, and good forces to rally. In business, talents supposed, nothing is more effectual or successful, than a good, though concealed, opinion of oneself, a firm resolution, and an unwearyed perseverance. None but madmen attempt impossibilities, and whatever is possible is one way or another to be brought about. If one method fails, try another, and suit your methods to the characters you have to deal with. At the Treaty of the Pyrenees, which Cardinal Mazurin and Don Louis de Harau concluded, Don Lille de Faesson, the latter carried some very important points by his constant and cool perseverance. The Cardinal had all the Italian vivacity and impatience, Don Louis all the Spanish phlegm and tenaciousness. The point which the Cardinal had the most at heart was, to hinder the re-establishment of the Prince of Conde, his implacable enemy, but he was in haste to conclude, and impatient to return to court, where his absence is always dangerous. Don Louis observed this, and never failed at every conference to bring the affair of the Prince of Conde upon the tapis. The Cardinal for some time refused even to treat upon it. Don Louis, with the same sang froi as constantly persisted, till he at last prevailed, contrary to the intentions and the interest both of the Cardinal and of his court. Sense must distinguish between what is impossible and what is only difficult, and spirit and perseverance will get the better of the latter. Every man is to be had one way or another, and every woman almost anyway. I must not omit one thing which is previously necessary to this, and indeed to everything else, which is attention, a flexibility of attention, never to be wholly engrossed by any past or future object, but instantly directed to the present one, be it what it will. An absent man can make but few observations, and those will be disjointed and imperfect ones, as half the circumstances must necessarily escape him. He can pursue nothing steadily because his absences make him lose his way. They are very disagreeable and hardly to be tolerated in old age, but in youth they cannot be forgiven. If you find that you have the least tendency to them, pray watch yourself very carefully, and you may prevent them now, but if you let them grow into habit you will find it very difficult to cure them hereafter, and a worstest temper I do not know. I heard with great satisfaction the other day from one who has been lately at Rome that nobody was better received in the best companies than yourself. The same thing I dare say will happen to you at Paris, where they are particularly kind to all strangers who will be civil to them and show a desire of pleasing. But they must be flattered a little, not only by words, but by a seeming preference given to their country, their manners and their customs, which is but a very small price to pay for a very good reputation. Where I in Africa I would pay it to a negro for his good will. Adjou. My dear friend. The President Montesquieu, whom you will be acquainted with at Paris, after having laid down in his book, de l'esprit de l'oie, the nature and principle of the three different kinds of government, vis, the democratical, the monarchical, and the despotic, treats of the education necessary for each respective form. His chapter upon the education proper for the monarchical I thought worth transcribing and sending to you. You will observe that the monarchy which he has in his eye is France. In monarchies the principal branch of education is not taught in colleges or academies. It commences in some measure at our setting out in the world, for this is the school of what we call honor, that universal preceptor which ought everywhere to be our guide. Here it is that we constantly hear three rules or maxims, vis, that we should have a certain nobleness in our virtues, a kind of frankness in our morals, and a particular politeness in our behavior. The virtues we are here taught are less what we owe to others than to ourselves. They are not so much what draws us toward society as what distinguishes us from our fellow citizens. Here the actions of men are judged not as virtuous but as shining, not as just but as great, not as reasonable but as extraordinary. When honor here meets with anything noble in our actions, it is either a judge that approves them or a sophister by whom they are excused. It allows of gallantry when united with the idea of sensible affection, or with that of conquest. This is the reason why we never meet with so strict a purity of morals and monarchies as in republican governments. It allows of cunning and craft when joined with the notion of greatness of soul or importance of affairs, as for instance in politics with whose finenesses it is far from being offended. It does not forbid adulation, but when separate from the idea of a large fortune, and connected only with the sense of our mean condition. With regard to morals I have observed that the education of monarchies ought to admit of a certain frankness in open carriage. Truth therefore in conversation is here a necessary point. But is it here for the sake of truth? By no means. Truth is requisite only because a person habituated to veracity has an air of boldness and freedom. And indeed a man of this stamp seems to lay a stress only on the things themselves, not on the manner in which they are received. Hence it is that in proportion as this kind of frankness is commended, that of the common people is despised, which has nothing but truth and simplicity for its object. In fine the education of monarchies requires a certain politeness of behavior. Man, a sociable animal, is formed to please in society, and a person that would break through the rules of decency, so as to shock those he conversed with. He would lose the public esteem, and become incapable of doing any good. But politeness, generally speaking, does not derive its original from so pure a source. It arises from a desire of distinguishing ourselves. It is pride that renders us polite. We are flattered with being taken notice of for a behavior that shows we are not of a mean condition, and that we have been bred up with those who in all ages are considered as the scum of the people. Politeness in monarchies is naturalized at court. One man excessively great renders everybody else little. Hence that regard which is paid to our fellow subjects, hence that politeness equally pleasing to those by whom, as to those toward whom it is practiced, because it gives people to understand that a person actually belongs, or at least deserves to belong to the court. A court heir consists in quitting a reel for a borrowed greatness. The latter pleases the courtier more than the former. It inspires him with a certain disdainful modesty, which shows itself externally, but whose pride insensibly diminishes in proportion to his distance from the source of this greatness. At court we find a delicacy of taste in everything, a delicacy arising from the constant use of the superfluities of life, from the variety and especially the satiety of pleasures, from the multiplicity and even confusion of fancies, which if they are not agreeable are sure of being well received. These are the things which properly fall within the province of education, in order to form what we call a man of honor, a man possessed of all the qualities and virtues requisite in this kind of government. Here it is that honor interferes with everything, mixing even with people's manner of thinking and directing their very principles. To this whimsical honor it is owing that the virtues are only just what it pleases. It adds rules of its own invention to everything prescribed to us. It extends our limits our duties according to its own fancy, whether they proceed from religion, politics, or morality. There is nothing so strongly inculcated in monarchies by the laws, by religion and honor, as submission to the prince's will. But this very honor tells us that the prince never ought to command a dishonorable action, because this would render us incapable of serving him. Creon refused to assassinate the Duke of Gaius, but offered to fight him. After the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, Charles the Ninth, having sent orders to the governors in the several provinces for the Huguenots to be murdered, by Count Dord, who commanded at Bayonne, wrote thus to the king, Sire, among the inhabitants of this town and your majesty's troops, I could not find so much as one executioner. They are honest citizens and brave soldiers. We jointly therefore beseech your majesty to command our arms and lives in things that are practicable. This great and generous soul looked upon a base action as a thing impossible. There is nothing that honor more strongly recommends to the nobility than to serve their prince in a military capacity. And indeed this is their favorite profession, because its dangers, its successes, and even its miscarriages are the road to grandeur. Yet this very law of its own making honor chooses to explain, and in case of any affront it requires or permits us to retire. It insists also that we should be at liberty either to seek or to reject employment, a liberty which it prefers even to an ample fortune. Honor therefore has its supreme laws, to which education is obliged to conform. The chief of these are that we are permitted to set a value upon our fortune, but are absolutely forbidden to set any upon our lives. The second is that when we are raised to a post or preferment we should never do or permit anything which may seem to imply that we look upon ourselves as inferior to the rank we hold. The third is that those things which honor forbids are more rigorously forbidden when the laws do not concur in the prohibition, and those that commands are more strongly insisted upon when they happen not to be commanded by law. Though our government differs considerably from the French in as much as we have fixed laws and constitutional barriers for the security of our liberties and properties, yet the President's observations hold pretty near as true in England as in France. Though monarchies may differ a good deal, kings differ very little. Those who are absolute desire to continue so, and those who are not endeavor to become so, hence the same maxims and manners almost in all courts, voluptuousness and profusion encouraged, the one to sink the people into indolence, the other into poverty, consequently into dependence. The court is called the world here as well as at Paris, and nothing more is meant by saying that a man knows the world than that he knows courts. In all courts you must expect to meet with connections without friendship, enmities without hatred, honor without virtue, appearances saved and reality sacrificed, good manners with bad morals, and all vice and virtue so disguised that whoever has only reason upon both would know neither when he first met them at court. It is well that you should know the map of that country, that when you come to travel in it you may do it with greater safety. From all this you will of yourself draw this obvious conclusion, that you are in truth but now going to the great and important school, the world, to which Westminster and Leipzig were only the little preparatory schools, as Marleybone, Windsor, etc. are to them. What you have already acquired will only place you in the second form of this new school, instead of the first. But if you intend, as I suppose you do, to get into the shell, you have very different things to learn from Latin and Greek, and which require much more sagacity and attention than those two dead languages. The language of pure and simple nature. The language of nature variously modified and corrupted by passions, prejudices, and habits. The language of simulation and dissimulation. Very hard, but very necessary to decipher. Homer has not half so many, nor so difficult dialects as the great book of the school you are now going to. Observe therefore progressively, and with the greatest attention, what the best scholars in the form immediately above you do, and so on, until you get into the shell yourself. Adieu. Pray tell Mr. Hart that I have received his letter of the 27th May news-style, and that I advise him never to take the English news-writers, literally, who have never yet inserted any one thing quite right. I have both his patent and his mandiments, in both which he is Walter. Let the newspapers call him what they please. I should not deserve that appellation in return from you, if I did not freely and explicitly inform you of every courageable defect which I may either hear of, suspect, or at any time discover in you. Those who in the common course of the world will call themselves your friends, or whom, according to the common notions of friendship, you may possibly think such, will never tell you of your faults, still less of your weaknesses. But on the contrary, more desirous to make you their friend than to prove themselves yours, they will flatter both, and in truth not be sorry for either. Interiorly, most people enjoy the inferiority of their best friends. The useful and essential part of friendship to you is reserved singly for Mr. Hart and myself. Our relations to you stand pure and unsuspected of all private views. In whatever we say to you, we can have no interest but yours. We are therefore authorized to represent, advise, and remonstrate, and your reason must tell you that you ought to attend to and believe us. I am creditably informed that there is still a considerable hitch or hobble in your enunciation, and that when you speak fast you sometimes speak unintelligibly. I have formerly and frequently laid my thoughts before you so fully upon this subject, that I can say nothing new upon it now. I must therefore only repeat that your hold depends upon it. Your trade is to speak well, both in public and in private. The manner of your speaking is full as important as the matter, as more people have ears to be tickled than understandings to judge. Be your productions ever so good they will be of no use if you stifle and strangle them in their birth. The best compositions of Corelli, if ill-executed and played out of tune, instead of touching as they do when well-performed, would only excite the indignation of the hearers when murdered by an unskillful performer. But to murder your own productions and that quorum popular is a median cruelty, which Horace absolutely forbids. Remember of what importance the Masthanese and of one of the Graci thought enunciation, and read what stressed Cicero and Quintillion lay upon it. Even the herb women at Athens were correct judges of it. Oratory with all its graces, that of enunciation in particular, is full as necessary in our government as it ever was in Greece or Rome. No man can make a fortune or figure in this country without speaking and speaking well in public. If you will persuade, you must first please. And if you will please, you must tune your voice to harmony. You must articulate every syllable distinctly. Your emphasis and cadences must be strong and properly marked. And the whole together must be graceful and engaging. If you do not speak in that manner, you had much better not speak at all. All the learning you have or ever can have is not worth one groat without it. It may be a comfort and an amusement to you in your closet, but it can be of no use to you in the world. Let me conjure you, therefore, to make this your only object till you have absolutely conquered it, for that is in your power. Think of nothing else, read and speak for nothing else. Read aloud, though alone, and read articulately and distinctly, as if you were reading in public, and on the most important occasion. Read pieces of eloquence, declaim scenes of tragedies to Mr. Hart, as if he were a numerous audience. If there is any particular consonant which you have a difficulty in articulating, as I think you had with the R, utter it millions and millions of times till you have uttered it right. Never speak quick till you have first learned to speak well. In short, lay aside every book and every thought that does not directly tend to this great object, absolutely decisive of your future fortune and figure. The next thing necessary in your destination is writing correctly, elegantly, and in a good hand, too, in which three particulars I am sorry to tell you that you hitherto fail. Your handwriting is a very bad one, and would make a scurvy figure in an office-book of letters, or even a lady's pocket-book. But that fault is easily cured by care, since every man who has the use of his eyes and of his right hand can write whatever hand he pleases. As to the correctness and elegance of your writing, attention to grammar does the one, and to the best authors the other. In your letter to me of the twenty-seventh of June, New Style, you omitted the date of the place, so that I only conjectured from the contents that you were at Rome. Thus I have, with the truth and freedom of the tenderest affection, told you all your defects, at least all that I know or have heard of. Thank God they are all very curable. They must be cured, and I am sure you will cure them. That once done nothing remains for you to acquire or for me to wish you, but the turn, the manners, the address, and the graces of the polite world, which experience, observation, and good company will insensibly give you. Few people at your age have read, seen, and known as much as you have, and consequently few are so near as yourself to what I call perfection, by which I only mean being very near as well the best. Far therefore from being discouraged by what you still want, what you already have should encourage you to attempt, and convince you that by attempting you will inevitably obtain it. The difficulties which you have surmounted were much greater than any you have now to encounter. Till very lately your way has been only through thorns and briars, the few that now remain are mixed with roses. Pleasure is now the principle remaining part of your education. It will soften and polish your manners. It will make you pursue and at last overtake the graces. Pleasure is necessarily reciprocal. No one feels who does not at the same time give it. To be pleased one must please. What pleases you and others will in general please them in you. Paris is indisputably the seat of the graces. They will even court you if you are not too coy. Frequent and observe the best companies there, and you will soon be naturalized among them. You will soon find how particularly attentive they are to the correctness and elegance of their language, and to the graces of their enunciation. They would even call the understanding of a man in question who should neglect or not know the infinite advantages arising from them. Nérée, ressentée, décliné, bien, are serious studies among them, and well deserved to be so everywhere. The conversations, even among the women, frequently turn upon the elegancies and minutest delicacies of the French language. And Anjouement, a gallant turn, prevails in all their companies, to women with whom they neither are nor pretend to be in love. But should you, as you may very possibly happen, to fall really in love there with some woman of fashion and sense, for I do not suppose you capable of falling in love with a strumpet, and that your rival, without half your parts of knowledge, should get the better of you, merely by dint of manners, Anjouement, Badinage, etc. How would you regret not having sufficiently attended to those accomplishments which you despised as superficial and trifling, but which you would then find of real consequence in the course of the world? And men as well as women are taken by those external graces. Shut up your books, then, now as a business, and open them only as a pleasure. But let the great book of the world be your serious study. Read it over and over, get it by heart, adopt its style, and make it your own. When I cast up your account as it now stands, I rejoice to see the balance so much in your favor, and that the items per contra are so few and of such a nature that they may be very easily canceled. By way of debtor and creditor it stands thus. Creditor. French, German, Italian, Latin, Greek, logic, ethics, history, attitude, juice, genticum, publicum, debtor, to English enunciation, manners. This, my dear friend, is a very true account, and a very encouraging one for you. A man who owes so little can clear it off in a very little time, and if he is a prudent man, will, whereas a man who, by long negligence, owes a great deal, despairs of ever being able to pay, and therefore never looks into his account at all. When you go to Genoa, pray observe carefully all the environs of it, and view them with somebody who can tell you all the situations and operations of the Austrian army, during that famous siege, if it deserves to be called one, for in reality the town was never besieged, nor had the Austrians any one thing necessary for a siege. If Marquis Centurioni, who was last winter in England, should happen to be there, go to him with my compliments, and he will show you all imaginable civilities. I could have sent you some letters to Florence, but that I knew Mr. Man would be of more use to you than all of them. Pray make him my compliments. Cultivate your Italian while you are at Florence, where it is spoken in its utmost purity, but ill pronounced. Pray save me the seed of some of the best melons you eat, and put it up dry in paper. You need not send it me, but Mr. Hart will bring it in his pocket when he comes over. I should likewise be glad of some cuttings of the best figs, especially la pica gentile and the maltese. But as this is not the season for them, Mr. Man will, I daresay, undertake that commission, and send them to me at the proper time by leg-horn. Adieu. Endeavour to please others, and divert yourself as much as ever you can, in honnête et galantan. P.S. I send you the enclose to deliver to Lord Rochefort upon your arrival at Turin. End of Section 86, read by Professor Heather and by. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 87 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter 118 London, August 6, Old Style, 1750. My dear friend, since your letter from Siena, which gave me a very imperfect account of both your illness and your recovery, I have not received one word either from you or Mr. Hart. I impute this to the carelessness of the post simply, and the great distance between us at present exposes our letters to those accidents. But when you come to Paris, from whence the letters arrive here very regularly, I shall insist upon your writing to me constantly once a week, and that upon the same day, for instance, every Thursday, that I may know by what mail to expect your letter. I shall also require you to be more minute in your account of yourself than you have hitherto been, or that I have required, because of the informations which I receive from time to time from Mr. Hart. At Paris you will be out of your time, and must set up for yourself. It is then that I shall be very solicitous to know how you carry on your business. While Mr. Hart was your partner, the care was his share and the profit yours. But at Paris, if you will have the latter, you must take the former along with it. It will be quite a new world to you, very different from the little world that you have hitherto seen, and you will have much more to do in it. You must keep your little accounts constantly every morning, if you would not have them run into confusion, and swell into a bulk that would frighten you from ever looking into them at all. You must allow some time for learning what you do not know, and some time for keeping what you do know, and you must leave a great deal of time for your pleasures, which, I repeat it again, are now become the most necessary part of your education. It is by conversations, dinners, suppers, entertainments, etc., in the best companies, that you must be formed for the world. Les manières, les agrumments, les graces, cannot be learned by theory. They are only to be got by use among those who have them. And they are now the main object of your life, as they are the necessary steps to your fortune. A man of the best parts, and the greatest learning, if he does not know the world by his own experience and observation, will be very absurd, and consequently very unwelcome in company. He may say very good things, but they will probably be so ill-timed, misplaced, or improperly addressed, that he had much better hold his tongue. Full of his own matter, and uninformed of, or inattentive to, the particular circumstances and situations of the company, he vented indiscriminately. He put some people out of countenance, he shocks others, and frightens all, who dread what may come out next. The most general rule that I can give you for the world, and which your experience will convince you of the truth of, is, never to give the tone to the company, but to take it from them, and to labor more to put them in conceit with themselves, than to make them admire you. Those whom you can make like themselves better will, I promise you, like you very well. A system monger, who, without knowing anything of the world, by experience, has formed a system of it in his dusty cell, lays it down, for example, that, from the general nature of mankind, flattery is pleasing. He will therefore flatter. But how? Why, indiscriminately. And instead of repairing and heightening the peace judiciously, with soft colors and a delicate pencil, with a coarse brush and a great deal of whitewash, he dobs and besmears the peace he means to adorn. His flattery offends even his patron, and is almost too gross for his mistress. A man of the world knows the force of flattery as well as he does, but then he knows how, when, and where to give it. He proportions his dose to the constitution of the patient. He flatters by application, by inference, by comparison, by hint, and seldom directly. In the course of the world there is the same difference in everything between system and practice. I long to have you at Paris, which is to be your great school. You will be then in a manner within reach of me. Tell me, are you perfectly recovered, or do you still find any remaining complaint upon your lungs? Your diet should be cooling, and at the same time nourishing. Milks of all kinds are proper for you. Wines of all kinds, bad. A great deal of gentle and no violent exercise is good for you. Adieu. Gratia, fama, evalutudo, concadent, abonde. End of Section 87. Read by Professor Heather Mby. For more free audio books or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 88 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter 119. London, October 22nd, Old Style, 1750. My dear friend, this letter will I am persuaded find you and I hope safely arrived at Montpellier, from whence I trust that Mr. Hart's indisposition will, by being totally removed, allow you to get to Paris before Christmas. You will there find two people who, though both English, I recommend in the strongest manner possible to your attention, and advise you to form the most intimate connections with them both, in their different ways. The one is a man whom you already know something of, but not near enough. It is the Earl of Huntington, who next to you is the truest object of my affection and esteem. And who, I am proud to say it, calls me and considers me as his adopted father. His parts are as quick as his knowledge is extensive, and if quality were worth putting into an account, where every other item is so much more valuable, he is the first almost in this country. The year he will make in it, soon after he returns to it, will, if I am not much more mistaken than I ever was in my life, equal his birth and my hopes. Such a connection will be of infinite advantage to you, and I can assure you that he is extremely disposed to form it upon my account, and will, I hope and believe, desire to improve and cement it upon your own. In our parliamentary government, connections are absolutely necessary. And if prudentially formed and ably maintained, the success of them is infallible. There are two sorts of connections which I would always advise you to have in view. The first I will call equal ones, by which I mean those where the two connecting parties reciprocally find their account, from pretty near an equal degree of parts and abilities. In those there must be a freer communication, each must see that the other is able, and be convinced that he is willing to be abused to him. There must be the principle of such connections, and there must be a mutual dependence, that present and separate interests shall not be able to break them. There must be a joint system of action, and in case of different opinions, each must recede a little, in order at last to form a unanimous one. Such I hope will be your connection with Lord Huntington. You will both come into Parliament at the same time, and if you have an equal share of abilities and application, you and he, with other young people, with whom you will naturally associate, may form a band which will be respected by any administration and make a figure in the public. The other sort of connections I call unequal ones, that is, where the parts are all on one side, and the rank and fortune on the other. Here the advantage is all on one side, but that advantage must be ably and artfully concealed, complacence and an engaging manner, and a patient toleration of certain eras of superiority must cement them. The weaker party must be taken by the heart, his head giving no hold, and he must be governed by being made to believe that he governs. These people, skillfully led, give great weight to their leader. I have formally pointed out to you a couple that I take to be proper objects for your skill, and you will meet with twenty more for they are very rife. The other person whom I recommend to you is a woman, not as a woman, for that is not immediately my business. Besides I fear that she is turned of fifty. It is Lady Hervey, whom I directed you to call upon at Dijon, but who, to my great joy, because, to your great advantage, passes all this winter at Paris. She has been bred all her life at courts, of which she has acquired all the easy good-breeding and politeness without the frivolousness. She has all the reading that a woman should have, and more than any woman need have, for she understands Latin perfectly well, though she wisely conceals it. As she will look upon you as her son, I desire that you will look upon her as my delegate, trust, consult, and apply to her without reserve. No woman ever had more than she has, le ton de la parfaitement bonne compagnie, les manières engageants, et les jeûnes c'est quoi qui plaît. Desire her to reprove and correct any, and every the least error and inaccuracy in your manners, air, address, et cetera. No woman in Europe can do it so well. None will do it more willingly, or in a more proper and obliging manner. In such a case she will not put you out of countenance, by telling you of it in company, but either intimate it by some sign, or wait for an opportunity when you are alone together. She is also in the best French company, where she will not only introduce but puff you, if I may use so low a word. And I can assure you that it is no little help in the Beaumont to be puffed there by a fashionable woman. I send you the enclosed billet to carry her, only as a certificate of the identity of your person, which I take it for granted she could not know again. You would be so much surprised to receive a whole letter from me without any mention of the exterior ornaments necessary for a gentleman, as manners, elocution, air, address, graces, et cetera, that to comply with your expectations I will touch upon them, and tell you that when you come to England I will show you some people whom I do not now care to name raised to the highest stations singly by those exterior and adventitious ornaments whose parts would never have entitled them to the smallest office in the excise. Are they then necessary and worth acquiring or not? You will see many instances of this kind at Paris, particularly a glaring one, of a person, Monsieur le Marachat de Richelieu, raised to the highest posts and dignities in France, as well as to be absolute sovereign of the Beaumont, simply by the graces of his person and address, by woman's chit-chat accompanied with important gestures, by an imposing air and pleasing aboard. Nay, by these helps he even passes for a wit, though he heth certainly no uncommon share of it. I will not name him, because it would be very imprudent in you to do it. A young fellow, at his first entrance into the Beaumont, must not offend the king de facto there. It is very often more necessary to conceal contempt than resentment, the former forgiven, but the latter sometimes forgot. There is a small quarto book entitled Histoire chronologique de la France, fully published by Le Président et No, a man of parts and learning, with whom you will probably get acquainted at Paris. I desire that it may always lie upon your table, for your recourse is often as you read history. The chronology, though chiefly relative to the history of France, is not singly confined to it, but the most interesting events of all the rest of Europe are also inserted, and many of them adorned by short, pretty, and just reflections. The new edition of Les Memoirs de Soleil, in three quarto volumes, is also extremely well worth your reading, as it will give you a clearer and truer notion of one of the most interesting periods of French history, than you can yet have formed from all the other books you may have read upon the subject. That prince, I mean Henry IV, had all the accomplishments and virtues of a hero and of a king and almost of a man. The last are the most rarely seen. May you possess them all. Adieu. Pray, make my compliments to Mr. Hart, and let him know that I have this moment received his letter of the twelfth, new style, from Entebbe's. It requires no immediate answer. I shall therefore delay mine till I have another from him. Give him the enclosed which I have received for Mr. Elliot. I hope that this letter will not find you still at Montpellier, but rather be sent after you from thence to Paris, where I am persuaded that Mr. Hart could find as good advice for his leg as at Montpellier, if not better. But if he is of a different opinion, I am sure you ought to stay there as long as he desires. While you are in France, I could wish that the hours you allot for historical amusement should be entirely devoted to the history of France. One always reads history to most advantage in that country to which it is relative. Not only books, but persons being ever at hand to solve doubts and clear up difficulties. I do by no means advise you to throw away your time in ransacking, like a dull antiquarian, the minute and unimportant parts of remote and fabulous times. Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote, and a general notion of the history of France, from the conquest of that country by the Franks, to the reign of Louis XI, is sufficient for use, consequently sufficient for you. There are, however, in those remote times some remarkable eras that deserve more particular attention. I mean those in which some notable alterations happened in the constitution and form of government. As for example in the settlement of Clovis in Gaul, and the form of government which he then established, for by the way that form of government differed in this particular from all the other Gothic governments, that the people, neither collectively nor by representatives, had any share in it. It was a mixture of monarchy and aristocracy, and what were called the State's General of France consisted only of the nobility and the clergy, till the time of Philip de Bell, in the very beginning of the fourteenth century, who first called the people to those assemblies, by no means for the good of the people who were only amused by this pretended honor, but in truth to check the nobility and clergy, and induce them to grant the money he wanted for his profusion. This was a scheme of Engaran de Mourigny, his minister, who governed both him and his kingdom to such a degree as to be called the co-adjuder and governor of the kingdom. Charles Martel laid aside these assemblies and governed by open force. Pepin restored them, and attached them to him, and with them the nation, by which means he deposed childrenic and mounted the throne. This is a second period worth your attention. The third race of kings, which begins with Hugh Capay, is the third period. A judicious reader of history will save himself a great deal of time and trouble by attending with care only to those interesting periods of history which furnish remarkable events, and make eras, and going slightly over the common run of events. Some people read history as others read the pilgrim's progress, giving equal attention to, and indiscriminately loading their memories with, every part alike. But I would have you read it in a different manner, take the shortest general history you can find of every country, and mark down in that history the most important periods, such as conquests, changes of kings, and alterations of the form of government, and then have recourse to more extensive histories or particular treatises relative to those great points. Consider them well, trace up their causes, and follow their consequences. For instance, there is a most excellent, though very short history of France by Le Gendre. Read that with attention, and you will know enough of the general history, but when you find there such remarkable periods as are above mentioned, consult Mésoré, and other of the best and minutest historians, as well as political treatises upon those subjects, in later times, memoirs, from those of Philippe de Comine, down to the innumerable ones in the reign of Louis XIV, have been of great use, and have thrown great light upon particular parts of history. Conversation in France, if you have the address and dexterity to turn it upon useful subjects, will exceedingly improve your historical knowledge. For people there, however classically ignorant they may be, think it a shame to be ignorant of the history of their own country. They read that if they read nothing else, and having often read nothing else, are proud of having read that, and talk of it willingly. And the women are well instructed in that sort of reading. I am far from meaning, by this, that you should always be talking wisely in company of books, history, and matters of knowledge. There are many companies which you will and ought to keep, where such conversations would be misplaced and ill-timed. Your own good sense must distinguish the company in the time. You must trifle only with triflers, and be serious only with the serious, but dance to those who pipe. Tour in Theatrum Cato Sevres Finistri It was justly said to an old man, How much more so would it be to one of your age? From the moment that you are dressed and go out, pocket all your knowledge with your watch, and never pull it out in company in less desired. The producing of the one unasked implies that you are weary of the company, and the producing of the other unrequited will make the company weary of you. Company is a republic too jealous of its liberties to suffer a dictator even for a quarter of an hour. And yet in that, as in republics, there are some few who really govern. But then it is by seeming to disclaim, instead of attempting to usurp the power. That is the occasion in which manners, dexterity, address, and the indefinable Je ne sais quoi triumph. If properly exerted, their conquest is sure, and the more lasting for not being perceived. Remember that this is not only your first and greatest, but ought to be almost your only object while you are in France. I know that many of your countrymen are apt to call the freedom and vivacity of the French, petulancy and ill-breeding. But should you think so, I desire upon many accounts that you will not say so. I admit that it may be in some instances of petit mâtre taudit and in some young people unbroken to the world. But I can assure you that you will find it much otherwise with people of a certain rank in age, upon whose model you will do very well to form yourself. We call their steady assurance impudence, why? Only because what we call modesty is awkward bashfulness and mauvaison. For my part I see no impudence, but on the contrary, infinite utility and advantage in presenting oneself with the same coolness and unconcern in any and every company. Till one can do that, I am very sure that one can never present oneself well. Whatever is done under concern and embarrassment must be ill done, until a man is absolutely easy and unconcerned in every company, he will never be thought to have kept good company, nor be very welcome in it. A steady assurance with seeming modesty is possibly the most useful qualification that a man can have in every part of life. A man would certainly make a very considerable fortune and figure in the world whose modesty and timidity should often, as bashfulness always does, put him in the deplorable and lamentable situation of the pious Aonis, when obstipuit steturante came evokes fosibus hesit, fortune as well as women, born to be controlled, stooped to the forward and the bold. Assurance and intrepidity, under the white banner of seeming modesty, clear the way for merit, that would otherwise be discouraged by difficulties in its journey, whereas bare-faced impudence is the noisy and blustering harbinger of a worthless and senseless usurper. You will think that I shall never have done recommending to you these exterior worldly accomplishments, and you will think right, for I never shall. They are of two great consequence to you for me to be indifferent or negligent about them. The shining part of your future figure and fortune depends now wholly upon them. These are the acquisitions which must give efficacy and success to those you have already made. To have it said and believed that you are the most learned man in England would be no more than what's said and believed of Dr. Bentley. But to have it said at the same time that you are also the best bread, most polite and agreeable man in the kingdom, would be such a happy composition of a character as I never yet knew any one man deserve, and which I will endeavor as well as ardently wish that you may. Absolute perfection is, I well know, unattainable. But I know too that a man of parts may be unwaryedly aiming at it, and arrive pretty near it. Try. Labor. Persevere. Adieu. End of Section 89, read by Professor Heather Mbye. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 90 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Chapter 121 London, November 8, Old Style, 1750. My dear friend, before you get to Paris, where you will soon be left to your own discretion, if you have any, it is necessary that we should understand one another thoroughly, which is the most probable way of preventing disputes. Money, the cause of much mischief in the world, is the cause of most quarrels between fathers and sons, the former commonly thinking that they cannot give too little, and the latter that they cannot have enough, both equally in the wrong. You must do me the justice to acknowledge that I have hitherto neither stinted nor grudged any expense that could be of real use or pleasure to you. And I can assure you, by the way, that you have traveled at a much more considerable expense than I did myself. But I never so much as thought of that, while Mr. Hart was at the head of your finances, being very sure that the sums granted were scrupulously applied to the uses for which they were intended. But the case will soon be altered, and you will be your own receiver and treasurer. However, I promise you that we will not quarrel singly upon the quantum, which shall be cheerfully and freely granted. The application and approbation of it will be the material point, which I am now going to clear up and finally settle with you. I will fix, nor even name, no settled allowance, though I well know in my own mind what would be the proper one. But I will first try your drafts, by which I can, in a good degree, judge of your conduct. This only I tell you in general, that if the channels through which my money is to go are the proper ones, the source shall not be scanty. But should it deviate into dirty, muddy, and obscure ones, which by the by it cannot do for a week without my knowing it, I give you fair and timely notice that the source will instantly be dry. Mr. Hart, in establishing you at Paris, will point out to you those proper channels. He will leave you there upon the foot of a man of fashion, and I will continue you upon the same. You will have your coach, your valet de chambre, your own footman, and a valet de plus, which, by the way, is one servant more than I had. I would have you very well dressed, by which I mean dressed as the generality of people of fashion are, that is, not to be taken notice of, for being either more or less fine than other people. It is by being well dressed, not finely dressed, that a gentleman should be distinguished. You must frequently spectacle, which expense I show willingly supply. You must play à des petits jus de commerce in mixed companies. That article is trifling, I shall pay it cheerfully. All the other articles of pocket-money are very inconsiderable at Paris, in comparison of what they are here, the silly custom of giving money wherever one dines or sups, and the expensive importunity of subscriptions not being yet introduced there. Having thus reckoned up all the decent expenses of a gentleman, which I will most readily defray, I come now to those which I will neither bear nor supply. The first of these is gaming, of which, though I have not the least reason to suspect you, I think it necessary eventually to assure you that no consideration in the world shall ever make me pay your play-dents. Should you ever urge me that your honor is pawned, I should most immovably answer you that it was your honor, not mine, that was pawned, and that your creditor might, Ian, take the pawn for the debt. Low company and low pleasures are always much more costly than liberal and elegant ones. The disgraceful riots of a tavern are much more expensive, as well as dishonorable, than the sometimes pardonable excesses in good company. I must absolutely hear of no tavern scrapes and squabbles. I come now to another very material point, I mean women, and I will not address myself to you upon this subject, either in a religious, a moral, or a parental style. I will even lay aside my age, remember yours, and speak to you as one man of pleasure, if he had parts, too, would speak to another. I will, by no means, pay for horrors, and their never-failing consequences. Surgeons. Nor will I, upon any account, keep singers, dancers, actresses, and id genus omne, and independently of the expense, I must tell you that such connections would give me, and all sensible people, the utmost contempt for your parts and address. A young fellow must have as little sense as to address, to venture, or more properly to sacrifice, his health and ruin his fortune, with such sort of creatures. In such a place as Paris especially, where gallantry is both the profession and the practice of every woman of fashion, to speak plainly I will not forgive your understanding, C's and P's, nor will your constitution forgive them you. These distempers, as well as their cures, fall nine times in ten upon the lungs. This argument, I am sure, ought to have weight with you, for I protest to you, that if you meet with any such accident, I would not give one year's purchase for your life. Lastly, there is another sort of expense that I will not allow, only because it is a silly one. I mean the fooling away your money in bobbles at toy shops. Have one handsome snuff-box if you take snuff, and one handsome sword, but then no more pretty and very useless things. By what goes before you will easily perceive that I mean to allow you whatever is necessary, not only for the figure, but for the pleasures of a gentleman, and not to supply the perfusion of a rake. This you must confess does not savor of either the severity or parsimony of old age. I consider this agreement between us as a subsidiary treaty on my part, for services to be performed on yours. I promise you that I will be as punctual in the payment of the subsidies as England has been during the last war. But then I give you notice at the same time that I require a much more scrupulous execution of the treaty on your part, than we met with on that of our allies, or else that payment will be stopped. I hope all that I have said now was absolutely unnecessary, and that sentiments more worthy and more noble than pecuniary ones would of themselves have pointed out to you the conduct I recommended. But at all events I resolve to be once for all explicit with you, that in the worst that can happen you may not plead ignorance, and complain that I had not sufficiently explained to you my intentions. Having mentioned the word rake, I must say a word or two more upon that subject, because young people too frequently, and always fatally, are apt to mistake that character for a man of pleasure, whereas there are not in the world two characters more different. A rake is a composition of all the lowest, most ignoble, degrading, and shameful vices. They all conspire to disgrace his character, and to ruin his fortune, while wine and the peas contend which shall soonest and most effectually destroy his constitution. A disillet, vladicious footman, or porter, makes full as good a rake as the man of the first quality. By the by let me tell you that in the wildest part of my youth I never was a rake, but on the contrary always detested and despised that character. A man of pleasure, though not always so scrupulous as he should be, and as one day he will wish he had been, finds at least his pleasures by taste, accompanies them with decency, and enjoys them with dignity. Few men can be men of pleasure, every man may be a rake. Remember that I shall know everything you say or do at Paris exactly as if, by the force of magic, I could follow you everywhere, like a silt or a gnome, invisible myself. Seneca says very pritally that one should ask nothing of God, but what one should be willing that men should know, nor of men, but what one should be willing that God should know. I advise you to say and do nothing at Paris but what you would be willing that I should know. I hope, nay, I believe that will be the case. Since I dare say you do not want, instruction I am sure you have never wanted, experience you are daily gaining, all which together must inevitably, I should think, make you both respectable, humble, humble, and self-sacrificing, and I should think, make you both respectable and amiable. The perfection of a human character. In that case nothing shall be wanting on my part, and you shall solidly experience all the extent and tenderness of my affection for you, but dread the reverse of both. Adieu. P.S., when you get to Paris, after you have been to wait on Lord Abelmoral, go to see Mr. York, whom I have particular reasons for desiring that you should be well with, as I shall hereafter explain to you. Let him know that my orders and your own inclinations conspired to make you desire his friendship and protection. CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS TO A SON. LETTER I have sent you so many preparatory letters for Paris, that this, which will meet you there, shall only be a summary of them all. You have hitherto had more liberty than anybody of your age ever had, and I must do you the justice to own, that you have made a better use of it than most people of your age would have done. But then, though you had not a jailer, you had a friend with you. At Paris you will not only be unconfined but unassisted. Your own good sense must be your only guide. I have great confidence in it, and I am convinced that I shall receive just such accounts of your conduct at Paris as I could wish, for I tell you beforehand that I shall be most minutely informed of all that you do, and of almost all that you say there. Enjoy the pleasures of youth. You cannot do better. But refine and dignify them like a man of parts. Let them raise and not sink. Let them adorn and not vilify your character. Let them in short be the pleasures of a gentleman, and taken with your equals at least, but rather with your superiors, and those chiefly French. Inquire into the characters of the several academicians before you form a connection with any of them, and be most upon your guard against those who make the most court to you. You cannot study much in the academy, but you may study usefully there, if you are an economist of your time, and bestow only upon good books those quarters and halves of hours, which occur to everybody in the course of almost every day, and which at the year's end amount to a very considerable sum of time. Let Greek without fail share some part of every day. I do not mean the Greek poets, the catches of anachryon, or the tender complaints of theocrates, or even the porter-like language of Homer's heroes, of whom all smatterers in Greek know a little, quote often, and talk of always. But I mean Plato, Aristoteles, Demosthenes, and Thucydides, whom none but adepts know. It is Greek that must distinguish you in the learned world, Latin alone will not, and Greek must be sought to be retained, for it never occurs like Latin. When you read history or other books of amusement, let every language you are master of have its turn, so that you may not only retain, but improve in every one. I also desire that you will converse in German and Italian, with all the Germans and Italians with whom you converse at all. This will be a very agreeable and flattering thing to them, and a very useful one to you. Pray apply yourself diligently to your exercises, for though the doing them well is not supremum meritorious, the doing them ill is illiberal, vulgar, and ridiculous. I recommend theatrical representations to you, which are excellent at Paris. The tragedies of Cornille and Racine, and the comedies of Molière, well attended to, are admirable lessons, both for the heart and the head. There is not nor ever was any theatre comparable to the French. If the music of the French operas does not please your Italian ear, the words of them, at least, are sense and poetry, which is much more than, I can say, of any Italian opera that I ever read or heard in my life. I send you the enclosed letter of recommendation to Marquis Smatenion, which I would have you delivered to him as soon as you can. You will, I am sure, feel the good effects of his warm friendship for me and Lord Bollingbroke, who has also wrote to him upon your subject. By that and by the other letters which I have sent you, you will be at once so thoroughly introduced into the best French company that you must take some pains if you will keep bad. But that is what I do not suspect you of. You have, I am sure, too much right ambition to prefer low and disgraceful company to that of your superiors, both in rank and age. Your character, and consequently your fortune, absolutely depends upon the company you keep, and the turn you take at Paris. I do not in the least mean a grave turn, on the contrary, a gay, a sprightly, but at the same time an elegant and liberal one. Keep carefully out of all scrapes and quarrels. They lower a character extremely, and are particularly dangerous in France, where a man is dishonored by not resenting in a front, and utterly ruined by resenting it. The young Frenchmen are hasty, giddy and petulant, friendly national, and avanta-joe. Forbear from any national jokes or reflections, which are always improper and commonly unjust. The colder northern nations generally look upon France as a whistling, singing, dancing, frivolous nation. This notion is very far from being a true one, though many petit maltre by their behavior seem to justify it. But those very petit maltre, when mellowed by age and experience, very often turn out to be very able men. The number of great generals and statesmen, as well as excellent authors, that France has produced, is an undeniable proof that it is not that frivolous, unthinking, empty nation that northern prejudices suppose it. Seem to like an approve of everything at first, and I promise you that you will like an approve of many things afterward. I expect that you will write to me constantly, once every week, which I desire may be every Thursday, and that your letters may inform me of your personal transactions, not of what you see, but of whom you see, and what you do. Be your own monitor, now that you will have no other. As to annunciation, I must repeat it to you again and again, that there is no one thing so necessary. All other talents, without that, are absolutely useless except in your own closet. It sounds ridiculously to bid you steady with your dancing matter, and yet I do. The bodily carriage and graces are of infinite consequence to everybody, and more particularly to you. At you for this time, my dear child, yours tenderly. End of Section ninety-one. Read by Professor Heather Mby. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section ninety-two of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. London, November eleventh, old style, seventeen fifty. My dear friend, you will possibly think that this letter turns upon strange, little, trifling objects, and you will think right, if you consider them separately. But if you take them aggregately, you will be convinced that as parts, which conspired to form that whole, called the exterior of a manifestation, they are of importance. I shall not dwell now upon these personal graces, that liberal air, and that engaging address, which I have so often recommended to you, but to send still lower to your dress, cleanliness, and care of your person. When you come to Paris, you must take care to be extremely well-dressed, that is, as the fashionable people are. This does by no means consist in the finery, but in the taste, fitness, and manner of wearing your clothes. A fine suit ill-made, and slatternly or stiffly worn, far from adorning, only exposes the awkwardness of the wearer. Get the best French tailor to make your clothes whatever they are in the fashion, and to fit you, and then wear them, button them, or unbutton them, as the gentilist people you see do. Let your man learn of the best fraisure to do your hair well, for that is a very material part of your dress. Take care to have your stockings well-guarded up, and your shoes well-buckled, for nothing gives a more slovenly air to a man than ill-dressed legs. In your person you must be accurately clean, and your teeth, hands, and nails should be superlatively so. A dirty mouth has real ill consequences to the owner, for it infallibly causes the decay as well as the intolerable pain of the teeth, and it is very offensive to his acquaintances, for it will most inevitably stink. I insist, therefore, that you wash your teeth the first thing you do every morning, with a soft sponge and warm water, for four or five minutes, and then wash your mouth five or six times. Mouton, whom I desire you will send for upon your arrival at Paris, will give you an opiate and a liquor to be used sometimes. Nothing looks more ordinary, vulgar, and illiberal than dirty hands and ugly, uneven, and ragged nails. I do not suspect you of that shocking, awkward trick of fighting yours, but that is not enough. You must keep the ends of them smooth and clean, not tipped with black as the ordinary peoples always are. The ends of your nails should be small segments of circles, which by a very little care in the cutting they are very easily brought to. Every time that you wipe your hands rub the skin around your nails backward that it may not grow up, and shorten your nails too much. The cleanliness of the rest of your person, which, by the way, will conduce greatly to your health, I refer from time to time to the banyo. My mentioning these particulars arises I freely own from some suspicion that the hints are not unnecessary, for when you were a schoolboy you were slovenly and dirty above your fellows. I must add another caution, which is that upon no count whatsoever you put your fingers, as too many people are apt to do, in your nose or ears. It is the most shocking, nasty, vulgar rudeness that can be offered to company. It disgusts one, it turns one's stomach, and for my own part I would much rather know that a man's fingers were actually in his breech than see them in his nose. Wash your ears well every morning and blow your nose in your handkerchief whenever you have occasion, but by the way, without looking at it afterward. There should be, in the least, as well as in the greatest parts of a gentleman, les maniers nobles. Sense will teach you some, observation others, attend carefully to the manners, the diction, the motions of people of the first fashion, and form your own upon them. On the other hand, observe a little of those of the vulgar in order to avoid them, for though the things which they say or do may be the same, the manner is always totally different, and in that and nothing else consists the characteristic of a man of fashion. The lowest peasant speaks, moves, dresses, eats, and drinks, as much as a man of the first fashion, but does them all quite differently, so that by the doing and saying most things in a manner opposite to that of the vulgar, you have a great chance of doing and saying them right. There are gradations in awkwardness and vulgarism, as there are in everything else. Les maniers de robe, though not quite right, are still better than les maniers bourgeois, and those though bad are still better than les maniers du campagne. But the language, the air, the dress, and the manners of the court are the only true standard. Les maniers de robe et d'une honne tombe, ex pédé hoculum, is an old and true saying, and very applicable to our present subject. For man of parts, who has been bred at courts, and used to keep the best company, will distinguish himself, and is to be known from the vulgar by every word, attitude, gesture, and even look. I cannot leave these seeming minutiae without repeating to you the necessity of your carving well, which is an article, little as it is, that is useful twice every day of one's life, and the doing it ill is very troublesome to one's self, and very disagreeable, often ridiculous to others. Having said all this, I cannot help reflecting what a formal, dull fellow or a cloistered pedant would say, if they were to see this letter. They would look upon it with the utmost contempt, and say that surely a father might find much better topics for advice to a son. I would admit it, if I had given you, or that you were capable of receiving no better. But if sufficient pains have been taken to form your heart and improve your mind, and as I hope not without success, I will tell those solid gentlemen that all these trifling things as they think them collectively form that pleasing je ne sais quoi, that ensemble, which they are utter strangers to both in themselves and others. The word amiable is not known in their language, or the thing in their manners. Great usage of the word, great attention, and a great desire of pleasing can alone give it, and it is no trifle. It is from old people's thinking upon these things as trifles, or not thinking of them at all, that so many young people are so awkward and so ill-bred. Their parents, often careless and unmindful of them, give them only the common run of education, as school, university, and then traveling, without examining, and very often without being able to judge, if they did examine, what progress they make in any one of these stages. Then they carelessly comfort themselves and say that their sons will do like other people's sons, and so they do. That is, commonly very ill. They correct none of the childish, nasty tricks which they get at school, nor the illiberal manners which they contract at the university, nor the frivolous and superficial pertness which is commonly all they acquire by their travels. As they do not tell them of these things nobody else can, so they go on in the practice of them, without ever hearing or knowing that they are unbecoming, indecent, and shocking. For, as I have often formerly observed to you, nobody but a father can take the liberty to reprove a young fellow, grown up, for those kinds of inaccuracies and improprieties of behavior. The most intimate friendship, unassisted by the paternal superiority, will not authorize it. I may truly say therefore that you are happy in having me for a sinecure, friendly, and quick-sighted monitor. Nothing will escape me. I shall pry for your defects in order to correct them, as curiously as I shall seek for your perfections in order to applaud and reward them, and with this difference only, that I shall publicly mention the latter and never hint at the former, but in a letter to or a tetet with you. I will never put you out of countenance before company, and I hope you will never give me reason to be out of countenance for you, as any one of the above-mentioned defects would make me. Praternon curate diminimus was a maxim in the Roman law, for causes only of a certain value were tried by him, but there were inferior jurisdictions that took cognizance of the smallest. Now I shall try you, not only as praetor in the greatest, but as censor in lesser, and as the lowest magistrate in the least cause. I have this moment received Mr. Hart's letter of the first November new-style, by which I am very glad to find that he thinks of moving toward Paris the end of this month, which looks as if his leg were better. Besides, in my opinion, you both of you only lose time at Montpellier. He would find better advice and you better company at Paris. In the meantime, I hope you go into the best company there is at Montpellier, and there is always some at the Entendant or the Commandant's. You will have had full time to learn les petits chansons de l'Andachienne, which are exceedingly pretty ones, both words and tunes. I remember when I was in those parts I was surprised at the difference which I found between the people on one side and those on the other side of the Rhône. The Provenceaux were, in general, surly, ill-bred, ugly and swarthy, the Langdachienne the very reverse, a cheerful, well-bred, handsome people. Adieu. Yours, most affectionately. P.S., upon reflection I direct this letter to Paris. I think you must have left Montpellier before it could arrive there.