for remember, that knowing any language imperfectly, is very little better than not knowing it at all:  people being as unwilling to speak in a language which they do not possess thoroughly, as others are to hear them.  Your thoughts are cramped, and appear to great disadvantage, in any language of which you are not perfect master.  Let modern history share part of your time, and that always accompanied with the maps of the places in question; geography and history are very imperfect separately, and, to be useful, must be joined.

Go to the Duchess of Courland’s as often as she and your leisure will permit.  The company of women of fashion will improve your manners, though not your understanding; and that complaisance and politeness, which are so useful in men’s company, can only be acquired in women’s.

Remember always, what I have told you a thousand times, that all the talents in the world will want all their lustre, and some part of their use too, if they are not adorned with that easy good-breeding, that engaging manner, and those graces, which seduce and prepossess people in your favor at first sight.  A proper care of your person is by no means to be neglected; always extremely clean; upon proper occasions fine.  Your carriage genteel, and your motions graceful.  Take particular care of your manner and address, when you present yourself in company.  Let them be respectful without meanness, easy without too much familiarity, genteel without affectation, and insinuating without any seeming art or design.

You need not send me any more extracts of the German constitution; which, by the course of your present studies, I know you must soon be acquainted with; but I would now rather that your letters should be a sort of journal of your own life.  As, for instance, what company you keep, what new acquaintances you make, what your pleasures are; with your own reflections upon the whole:  likewise what Greek and Latin books you read and understand.  Adieu!

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

Attention and civility please all
Avoid singularity
Blindness of the understanding is as much to be pitied
Choose your pleasures for yourself
Civility, which is a disposition to accommodate and oblige others
Complaisant indulgence for people’s weaknesses
Contempt
Disagreeable to seem reserved, and very dangerous not to be so
Do as you would be done by
Do what you are about
Dress well, and not too well
Dressed like the reasonable people of your own age
Easy without too much familiarity
Employ your whole time, which few people do
Exalt the gentle in woman and man—­above the merely genteel
Eyes and ears open and mouth mostly shut
Fit to live—­or not live at all
Flexibility of manners is necessary in the course of the world
Genteel without affectation
Geography and history are very imperfect separately