This has been a long political dissertation; but I am informed that political subjects are your favorite ones; which I am glad of, considering your destination.  You do well to get your materials all ready, before you begin your work.  As you buy and (I am told) read books of this kind, I will point out two or three for your purchase and perusal; I am not sure that I have not mentioned them before, but that is no matter, if you have not got them.  ’Memoires pour servir a l’Histoire du 17ieme Siecle’, is a most useful book for you to recur to for all the facts and chronology of that country:  it is in four volumes octavo, and very correct and exact.  If I do not mistake, I have formerly recommended to you, ‘Les Memoires du Cardinal de Retz’; however, if you have not yet read them, pray do, and with the attention which they deserve.  You will there find the best account of a very interesting period of the minority of Lewis XIV.  The characters are drawn short, but in a strong and masterly manner; and the political reflections are the only just and practical ones that I ever saw in print:  they are well worth your transcribing.  ’Le Commerce des Anciens, par Monsieur Huet.  Eveque d’Avranche’, in one little volume octavo, is worth your perusal, as commerce is a very considerable part of political knowledge.  I need not, I am sure, suggest to you, when you read the course of commerce, either of the ancients or of the moderns, to follow it upon your map; for there is no other way of remembering geography correctly, but by looking perpetually in the map for the places one reads of, even though one knows before, pretty near, where they are.

Adieu!  As all the accounts which I receive of you grow better and better, so I grow more and more affectionately, Yours.

LETTER XLIX

London, September 5, O. S. 1748.

Dear boy:  I have received yours, with the inclosed German letter to Mr. Gravenkop, which he assures me is extremely well written, considering the little time that you have applied yourself to that language.  As you have now got over the most difficult part, pray go on diligently, and make yourself absolutely master of the rest.  Whoever does not entirely possess a language, will never appear to advantage, or even equal to himself, either in speaking or writing it.  His ideas are fettered, and seem imperfect or confused, if he is not master of all the words and phrases necessary to express them.  I therefore desire, that you will not fail writing a German letter once every fortnight to Mr. Gravenkop; which will make the writing of that language familiar to you; and moreover, when you shall have left Germany and be arrived at Turin, I shall require you to write even to me in German; that you may not forget with ease what you have with difficulty learned.  I likewise desire, that while you are in Germany, you will take all opportunities of conversing in German, which is the only way of knowing that, or any other language, accurately.  You will also desire your German master to teach you the proper titles and superscriptions to be used to people of all ranks; which is a point so material, in Germany, that I have known many a letter returned unopened, because one title in twenty has been omitted in the direction.