As you are entirely master of the time when you will leave Bonn and go to Hanover, so are you master to stay at Hanover as long as you please, and to go from thence where you please; provided that at Christmas you are at Berlin, for the beginning of the Carnival:  this I would not have you say at Hanover, considering the mutual disposition of those two courts; but when anybody asks you where you are to go next, say that you propose rambling in Germany, at Brunswick, Cassel, etc., till the next spring; when you intend to be in Flanders, in your way to England.  I take Berlin, at this time, to be the politest, the most shining, and the most useful court in Europe for a young fellow to be at:  and therefore I would upon no account not have you there, for at least a couple of months of the Carnival.  If you are as well received, and pass your time as well at Bonn as I believe you will, I would advise you to remain there till about the 20th of August, N. S., in four days you will be at Hanover.  As for your stay there, it must be shorter or longer, according to certain circumstances which you know of; supposing them, at the best, then, stay within a week or ten days of the King’s return to England; but supposing them at the worst, your stay must not be too short, for reasons which you also know; no resentment must either appear or be suspected; therefore, at worst, I think you must remain there a month, and at best, as long as ever you please.  But I am convinced that all will turn out very well for you there.  Everybody is engaged or inclined to help you; the ministers, English and German, the principal ladies, and most of the foreign ministers; so that I may apply to you, ’nullum numen abest, si sit prudentia’.  Du Perron will, I believe, be back there from Turin much about the time you get there:  pray be very attentive to him, and connect yourself with him as much as ever you can; for, besides that he is a very pretty and well-informed man, he is very much in fashion at Hanover, is personally very well with the King and certain ladies; so that a visible intimacy and connection with him will do you credit and service.  Pray cultivate Monsieur Hop, the Dutch minister, who has always been very much my friend, and will, I am sure, be yours; his manners, it is true, are not very engaging; he is rough, but he is sincere.  It is very useful sometimes to see the things which one ought to avoid, as it is right to see very often those which one ought to imitate, and my friend Hop’s manners will frequently point out to you, what yours ought to be by the rule of contraries.

Congreve points out a sort of critics, to whom he says that we are doubly obliged:—­

     “Rules for good writing they with pains indite,
     Then show us what is bad, by what they write.”

It is certain that Monsieur Hop, with the best heart in the world, and a thousand good qualities, has a thousand enemies, and hardly a friend; simply from the roughness of his manners.