‘A Propos’ of Berlin, while you are there, take care to seem ignorant of all political matters between the two courts; such as the affairs of Ost Frise, and Saxe Lawemburg, etc., and enter into no conversations upon those points; but, however, be as well at court as you possibly can; live at it, and make one of it.  Should General Keith offer you civilities, do not decline them; but return them, however, without being ’enfant de la maison chez lui’:  say ‘des chores flatteuses’ of the Royal Family, and especially of his Prussian Majesty, to those who are the most like to repeat them.  In short, make yourself well there, without making yourself ill somewhere else.  Make compliments from me to Algarotti, and converse with him in Italian.

I go next week to the Bath, for a deafness, which I have been plagued with these four or five months; and which I am assured that pumping my head will remove.  This deafness, I own, has tried my patience; as it has cut me off from society, at an age when I had no pleasures but those left.  In the meantime, I have, by reading and writing, made my eyes supply the defect of my ears.  Madame H-----, I suppose, entertained both yours alike; however, I am very glad that you were well with her; for she is a good ‘proneuse’, and puffs are very useful to a young fellow at his entrance into the world.

If you should meet with Lord Pembroke again, anywhere, make him many compliments from me; and tell him that I should have written to him, but that I knew how troublesome an old correspondent must be to a young one.  He is much commended in the accounts from Hanover.

You will stay at Berlin just as long as you like it, and no longer; and from thence you are absolutely master of your own motions, either to The Hague, or to Brussels; but I think that you had better go to The Hague first, because that from thence Brussels will be in your way to Calais, which is a much better passage to England than from Helvoetsluys.  The two courts of The Hague and Brussels are worth your seeing; and you will see them both to advantage, by means of Colonel Yorke and Dayrolles.  Adieu.  Here is enough for this time.

LETTER CLXXVIII

London, September 26, 1752

My dear friend:  As you chiefly employ, or rather wholly engross my thoughts, I see every day, with increasing pleasure, the fair prospect which you have before you.  I had two views in your education; they draw nearer and nearer, and I have now very little reason to distrust your answering them fully.  Those two were, parliamentary and foreign affairs.  In consequence of those views, I took care, first, to give you a sufficient stock of sound learning, and next, an early knowledge of the world.  Without making a figure in parliament, no man can make any in this country; and eloquence alone enables a man to make a figure in parliament,