your observation, which might otherwise escape you; and your own observations upon mankind, when compared with those which you will find in books, will help you to fix the true point. [Nov. 1746.]

OLD FOOLS.-To know mankind well requires full as much attention and application as to know books, and, it may be, more sagacity and discernment. I am, at this time, acquainted with many elderly people, who have all passed their whole lives in the great world, but with such levity and inattention, that they know no more of it now, than they did at fifteen. [Same Date.]

INTROSPECTION.-You must look into people, as well as at them. Almost all people are born with all the passions, to a certain degree; but almost every man has a prevailing one, to which the others are subordinate. Search every one for that ruling passion; pry into the recesses of his heart, and observe the different workings of the same passion in different people. And, when you have found out the prevailing passion of any man, remember never to trust him, where that passion is concerned. Work upon him by it, if you please; but be upon your guard yourself against it, whatever professions he may make you. [Same date.]

YOUNG STANHOPE'S CHARACTER.-In the strict scrutiny which I have made into you, I have (thank God) hitherto not discovered any vice of the heart, or any peculiar weakness of the head: but I have discovered laziness, inattention, and indifference; faults which are only pardonable in old men, who, in the decline of life, when health and spirits fail, have a kind of claim to that sort of tranquillity. But a young man should

be ambitious to shine, and excel; alert, active, and indefatigable in the means of doing it; and, like Cæsar, "Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum." You seem to want that "vivida vis animi," which spurs and excites most young men to please, to shine, to excel. Without the desire and the pains necessary to be considerable, depend upon it, you never can be so; as, without the desire and attention necessary to please, you never can please. "Nullum numen abest, si sit prudentia," is unquestionably true, with regard to every thing except poetry. [Nov. 1746.]

HOW TO DRESS.-Take great care always to be dressed like the reasonable people of your own age, in the place where you are; whose dress is never spoken of one way or another, as either too negligent or too much studied. [Same date.]

ABSENT PEOPLE.-What is commonly called an absent man, is commonly either a very weak or a very affected man; but be he which he will, he is, I am sure, a very disagreeable man in company. He fails in all the common offices of civility; he seems not to know those people to-day, with whom yesterday he appeared to live in intimacy. He takes no part in the general conversation; but, on the contrary, breaks into it from time to time, with some start of his own, as if he waked from a dream. This (as I said before) is a sure indication, either of a mind so weak that it is not able to bear above one object at a time; or so affected, that it would be supposed to be wholly engrossed by, and directed to, some very great and important objects. Sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Locke, and (it may be) five or six more, since the creation of

the world, may have had a right to absence, from that intense thought which the things they were investigating required. But if a young man, and a man of the world, who has no such avocations to plead, will claim and exercise that right of absence in company, his pretended right should, in my mind, be turned into an involuntary absence, by his perpetual exclusion out of company. [Ibid.]

INSULTS AND INJURIES.-However frivolous a company may be, still, while you are among them, do not show them, by your inattention, that you think them so; but rather take their tone, and conform in some degree to their weakness, instead of manifesting your contempt for them. There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt: and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult. [Same date.]

FLATTERY.-Most people (I might say all people) have their weaknesses; they have their aversions and their likings, to such and such things; so that, if you were to laugh at a man for his aversion to a cat, or cheese (which are common antipathies), or, by inattention and negligence, to let them come in his way, where you could prevent it, he would, in the first case, think himself insulted, and, in the second, slighted; and would remember both. Whereas your care to procure for him what he likes, and to remove from him what he hates, shows him, that he is at least an object of your attention; flatters his vanity, and makes him possibly more your friend, than a more important service would have done. With regard to women, attentions still below these are necessary,

and, by the custom of the world, in some measure due, according to the laws of good breeding.

HIS LETTERS.-My long and frequent letters, which I send you, in great doubt of their success, put me in mind of certain papers, which you have, very lately, and I formerly, sent up to kites, along the string, which we called messengers; some of them the wind used to blow away, others were torn by the string, and but few of them got up and stuck to the kite. But I will content myself now, as I did then, if some of my present messengers do but stick to you. [Ibid.]

EMPLOYMENT OF TIME.-I hope you employ your whole time, which few people do; and that you put every moment to profit of some kind or other. I call company, walking, riding, &c., employing one's time, and, upon proper occasions, very usefully; but what I cannot forgive, in anybody, is sauntering, and doing nothing at all, with a thing so precious as time, and so irrecoverable when lost. [Dec. 9, O.S., 1746.1]

VULGAR PLEASURES.-Many young people adopt pleasures, for which they have not the least taste, only because they are called by that name. They often mistake so totally, as to imagine, that debauchery is pleasure. You must allow, that drunkenness, which is equally destructive to body and mind, is a fine pleasure. Gaming, that draws you into a thousand scrapes, leaves you penniless, and gives you the air and manners of an outrageous madman, is another most exquisite pleasure; is it not? As to running after women, the consequences of that

His lordship had during this year been made one of her Majesty's Secretaries of State.

vice are only the loss of one's nose, the total destruction of health, and, not unfrequently, the being run through the body.—[March, 1747.]

A GENTLEMAN'S PLEASURES.-The true pleasures of a gentleman are, those of the table, but within the bounds of moderation; good company, that is to say, people of merit; moderate play, which amuses without any interested views; and sprightly, gallant conversations, with women of fashion and sense.

These are the real pleasures of a gentleman; which occasion neither sickness, shame, nor repentance. Whatever exceeds them, becomes low vice, brutal passion, debauchery, and insanity of mind; all of which, far from giving satisfaction, bring on dishonour and disgrace. Adieu. [Same date.]

VIRTUE AND GOLD.-Virtue and learning, like gold, have their intrinsic value; but if they are not polished, they certainly lose a great deal of their lustre: and even polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold. What a number of sins does the cheerful, easy, good breeding of the French frequently cover? Many of them want common sense, many more common learning; but, in general, they make up so much by their manner for those defects, that, frequently, they pass undiscovered. I have often said, and do think, that a Frenchman, who, with a fund of virtue, learning and good sense, has the manners and good breeding of his country, is the perfection of human nature. [Same date.]

PLEASURE.-Do not think that I mean to snarl at pleasure, like a stoic, or to preach against it like a parson; no, I mean to point it out, and recommend