It is the exterior that always engages their hearts; and I would never advise you to give yourself much trouble about their understanding.  Princes in general (I mean those ‘Porphyrogenets’ who are born and bred in purple) are about the pitch of women; bred up like them, and are to be addressed and gained in the same manner.  They always see, they seldom weigh.  Your lustre, not your solidity, must take them; your inside will afterward support and secure what your outside has acquired.  With weak people (and they undoubtedly are three parts in four of mankind) good-breeding, address, and manners are everything; they can go no deeper; but let me assure you that they are a great deal even with people of the best understandings.  Where the eyes are not pleased, and the heart is not flattered, the mind will be apt to stand out.  Be this right or wrong, I confess I am so made myself.  Awkwardness and ill-breeding shock me to that degree, that where I meet with them, I cannot find in my heart to inquire into the intrinsic merit of that person—­I hastily decide in myself that he can have none; and am not sure that I should not even be sorry to know that he had any.  I often paint you in my imagination, in your present ‘lontananza’, and, while I view you in the light of ancient and modern learning, useful and ornamental knowledge, I am charmed with the prospect; but when I view you in another light, and represent you awkward, ungraceful, ill-bred, with vulgar air and manners, shambling toward me with inattention and distractions, I shall not pretend to describe to you what I feel; but will do as a skillful painter did formerly—­draw a veil before the countenance of the father.

I dare say you know already enough of architecture, to know that the Tuscan is the strongest and most solid of all the orders; but at the same time, it is the coarsest and clumsiest of them.  Its solidity does extremely well for the foundation and base floor of a great edifice; but if the whole building be Tuscan, it will attract no eyes, it will stop no passengers, it will invite no interior examination; people will take it for granted that the finishing and furnishing cannot be worth seeing, where the front is so unadorned and clumsy.  But if, upon the solid Tuscan foundation, the Doric, the Ionic, and the Corinthian orders rise gradually with all their beauty, proportions, and ornaments, the fabric seizes the most incurious eye, and stops the most careless passenger; who solicits admission as a favor, nay, often purchases it.  Just so will it fare with your, tittle fabric, which, at present, I fear, has more of the Tuscan than of the Corinthian order.  You must absolutely change the whole front, or nobody will knock at the door.  The several parts, which must compose this new front, are elegant, easy, natural, superior good-breeding; an engaging address; genteel motions; an insinuating softness in your looks, words, and actions; a spruce, lively air, fashionable dress; and all the glitter that a young fellow should have.