I most earnestly recommend one thing to you, during your present stay at Paris.  I own it is not the most agreeable; but I affirm it to be the most useful thing in the world to one of your age; and therefore I do hope that you will force and constrain yourself to do it.  I mean, to converse frequently, or rather to be in company frequently with both men and women much your superiors in age and rank.  I am very sensible that, at your age, ’vous y entrez pour peu de chose, et meme souvent pour rien, et que vous y passerez meme quelques mauvais quart-d’heures’; but no matter; you will be a solid gainer by it:  you will see, hear, and learn the turn and manners of those people; you will gain premature experience by it; and it will give you a habit of engaging and respectful attentions.  Versailles, as much as possible, though probably unentertaining:  the Palais Royal often, however dull:  foreign ministers of the first rank, frequently, and women, though old, who are respectable and respected for their rank or parts; such as Madame de Pusieux, Madame de Nivernois, Madame d’Aiguillon, Madame Geoffrain, etc.  This ‘sujetion’, if it be one to you, will cost you but very little in these three or four months that you are yet to pass in Paris, and will bring you in a great deal; nor will it, nor ought it, to hinder you from being in a more entertaining company a great part of the day.  ’Vous pouvez, si vous le voulex, tirer un grand parti de ces quatre mois’.  May God make you so, and bless you!  Adieu.

LETTER CLXXXII

Bath, November 16, O. S. 1752.

My dear friend:  Vanity, or to call it by a gentler name, the desire of admiration and applause, is, perhaps, the most universal principle of human actions; I do not say that it is the best; and I will own that it is sometimes the cause of both foolish and criminal effects.  But it is so much oftener the principle of right things, that though they ought to have a better, yet, considering human nature, that principle is to be encouraged and cherished, in consideration of its effects.  Where that desire is wanting, we are apt to be indifferent, listless, indolent, and inert; we do not exert our powers; and we appear to be as much below ourselves as the vainest man living can desire to appear above what he really is.

As I have made you my confessor, and do not scruple to confess even my weaknesses to you, I will fairly own that I had that vanity, that weakness, if it be one, to a prodigious degree; and, what is more, I confess it without repentance:  nay, I am glad I had it; since, if I have had the good fortune to please in the world, it is to that powerful and active principle that I owe it.  I began the world, not with a bare desire, but with an insatiable thirst, a rage of popularity, applause, and admiration.  If this made me do some silly things on one hand, it made me, on the other hand, do almost all the right