The Pope’s excommunications are no longer dreaded; his indulgences little solicited, and sell very cheap; and his territories formidable to no power, are coveted by many, and will, most undoubtedly, within a century, be scantled out among the great powers, who have now a footing in Italy, whenever they can agree upon the division of the bear’s skin.  Pray inform yourself thoroughly of the history of the popes and the popedom; which, for many centuries, is interwoven with the history of all Europe.  Read the best authors who treat of these matters, and especially Fra Paolo, ‘De Beneficiis’, a short, but very material book.  You will find at Rome some of all the religious orders in the Christian world.  Inform yourself carefully of their origin, their founders, their rules, their reforms, and even their dresses:  get acquainted with some of all of them, but particularly with the Jesuits; whose society I look upon to be the most able and best governed society in the world.  Get acquainted, if you can, with their General, who always resides at Rome; and who, though he has no seeming power out of his own society, has (it may be) more real influence over the whole world, than any temporal prince in it.  They have almost engrossed the education of youth; they are, in general, confessors to most of the princes of Europe; and they are the principal missionaries out of it; which three articles give them a most extensive influence and solid advantages; witness their settlement in Paraguay.  The Catholics in general declaim against that society; and yet are all governed by individuals of it.  They have, by turns, been banished, and with infamy, almost every country in Europe; and have always found means to be restored, even with triumph.  In short, I know no government in the world that is carried on upon such deep principles of policy, I will not add morality.  Converse with them, frequent them, court them; but know them.

Inform yourself, too, of that infernal court, the Inquisition; which, though not so considerable at Rome as in Spain and Portugal, will, however, be a good sample to you of what the villainy of some men can contrive, the folly of others receive, and both together establish, in spite of the first natural principles of reason, justice, and equity.

These are the proper and useful objects of the attention of a man of sense, when he travels; and these are the objects for which I have sent you abroad; and I hope you will return thoroughly informed of them.

I receive this very moment Mr. Harte’s letter of the 1st October, N. S., but I never received his former, to which he refers in this, and you refer in your last; in which he gave me the reasons for your leaving Verona so soon; nor have I ever received that letter in which your case was stated by your physicians.  Letters to and from me have worse luck than other people’s; for you have written to me, and I to you, for these last three months, by way of Germany, with as little success as before.