Mutual complaisances, attentions, and sacrifices of little conveniences, are as natural an implied compact between civilised people as protection and obedience are between kings and subjects; whoever, in either case, violates that compact justly forfeits all advantages arising from it.  For my own part, I really think that, next to the consciousness of doing a good action, that of doing a civil one is the most pleasing; and the epithet which I should covet the most, next to that of Aristides, would be that of well-bred.

I will conclude with these axioms: 

That the deepest learning, without good breeding, is unwelcome and tiresome pedantry, and of use nowhere but in a man’s own closet; and, consequently, of little or no use at all.

That a man who is not perfectly well-bred, is unfit for good company, and therefore unwelcome in it; will consequently dislike it soon, afterwards renounce it, and be reduced to solitude, or, what is considerably worse, low and bad company.

IV.—­The Fruits of Observation

London, September 22, 1752.  The day after the date of my last, I received your letter of the 8th.  I approve extremely of your intended progress.  I would have you see everything with your own eyes, and hear everything with your own ears, for I know, by very long experience, that it is very unsafe to trust to other people’s, Vanity and interest cause many misrepresentations, and folly causes many more.  Few people have parts enough to relate exactly and judiciously; and those who have, for some reason or other, never fail to sink or to add some circumstances.

The reception which you have met with at Hanover I look upon as an omen of your being well-received everywhere else, for, to tell you the truth, it was the place that I distrusted the most in that particular.  But there is a certain conduct, there are certaines manieres, that will, and must, get the better of all difficulties of that kind.  It is to acquire them that you still continue abroad, and go from court to court; they are personal, local, and temporal; they are modes which vary, and owe their existence to accidents, whim, and humour.  All the sense and reason in the world would never point them out; nothing but experience, observation, and what is called knowledge of the world can possibly teach them.

This knowledge is the true object of a gentleman’s travelling, if he travels as he ought to do.  By frequent good company in every country he himself becomes of every country; he is no longer an Englishman, a Frenchman, or an Italian; but he is a European.  He adopts respectively the best manners of every country, and is a Frenchman at Paris, an Italian at Rome, an Englishman at London.

This advantage, I must confess, very seldom accrues to my countrymen from their travelling, as they have neither the desire nor the means of getting into good company abroad; for, in the first place, they are confoundedly bashful; and, in the next place, they either speak no foreign language at all, or, if they do, it is barbarously.  You possess all the advantages that they want; you know the languages in perfection, and have constantly kept the best company in the places where you have been, so that you ought to be a European.