bred, with the easiness of a man of fashion.  As you must attend to your manners, so you must not neglect your person; but take care to be very clean, well dressed, and genteel; to have no disagreeable attitudes, nor awkward tricks; which many people use themselves to, and then cannot leave them off.  Do you take care to keep your teeth very clean, by washing them constantly every morning, and after every meal?  This is very necessary, both to preserve your teeth a great while, and to save you a great deal of pain.  Mine have plagued me long, and are now falling out, merely from want of care when I was your age.  Do you dress well, and not too well?  Do you consider your air and manner of presenting yourself enough, and not too much?  Neither negligent nor stiff?  All these things deserve a degree of care, a second-rate attention; they give an additional lustre to real merit.  My Lord Bacon says, that a pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation.  It is certainly an agreeable forerunner of merit, and smoothes the way for it.

Remember that I shall see you at Hanover next summer, and shall expect perfection; which if I do not meet with, or at least something very near it, you and I shall, not be very well together.  I shall dissect and analyze you with a microscope; so that I shall discover the least speck or blemish.  This is fair warning; therefore take your measures accordingly.  Yours.

LETTER XIII

London, August 21, O. S. 1747.

Dear boy:  I reckon that this letter has but a bare chance of finding you at Lausanne; but I was resolved to risk it, as it is the last that I shall write to you till you are settled at Leipsig.  I sent you by the last post, under cover to Mr. Harte, a letter of recommendation to one of the first people at Munich; which you will take care to present to him in the politest manner; he will certainly have you presented to the electoral family; and I hope you will go through that ceremony with great respect, good breeding, and ease.  As this is the first court that ever you will have been at, take care to inform yourself if there be any particular, customs or forms to be observed, that you may not commit any mistake.  At Vienna men always make courtesies, instead of bows, to the emperor; in France nobody bows at all to the king, nor kisses his hand; but in Spain and England, bows are made, and hands are kissed.  Thus every court has some peculiarity or other, of which those who go to them ought previously to inform themselves, to avoid blunders and awkwardnesses.

I have not time to say any more now, than to wish you good journey to Leipsig; and great attention, both there and in going there.  Adieu.

LETTER XIV

London, September 21, O. S. 1747