use to you in the world.  Let me conjure you, therefore, to make this your only object, till you have absolutely conquered it, for that is in your power; think of nothing else, read and speak for nothing else.  Read aloud, though alone, and read articulately and distinctly, as if you were reading in public, and on the most important occasion.  Recite pieces of eloquence, declaim scenes of tragedies to Mr. Harte, as if he were a numerous audience.  If there is any particular consonant which you have a difficulty in articulating, as I think you had with the R, utter it millions and millions of times, till you have uttered it right.  Never speak quick, till you have first learned to speak well.  In short, lay aside every book, and every thought, that does not directly tend to this great object, absolutely decisive of your future fortune and figure.

The next thing necessary in your destination, is writing correctly, elegantly, and in a good hand too; in which three particulars, I am sorry to tell you, that you hitherto fail.  Your handwriting is a very bad one, and would make a scurvy figure in an office-book of letters, or even in a lady’s pocket-book.  But that fault is easily cured by care, since every man, who has the use of his eyes and of his right hand, can write whatever hand he pleases.  As to the correctness and elegance of your writing, attention to grammar does the one, and to the best authors the other.  In your letter to me of the 27th June, N. S., you omitted the date of the place, so that I only conjectured from the contents that you were at Rome.

Thus I have, with the truth and freedom of the tenderest affection, told you all your defects, at least all that I know or have heard of.  Thank God, they are all very curable; they must be cured, and I am sure, you will cure them.  That once done, nothing remains for you to acquire, or for me to wish you, but the turn, the manners, the address, and the graces, of the polite world; which experience, observation, and good company; will insensibly give you.  Few people at your age have read, seen, and known, so much as you have; and consequently few are so near as yourself to what I call perfection, by which I only, mean being very near as well as the best.  Far, therefore, from being discouraged by what you still want, what you already have should encourage you to attempt, and convince you that by attempting you will inevitably obtain it.  The difficulties which you have surmounted were much greater than any you have now to encounter.  Till very lately, your way has been only through thorns and briars; the few that now remain are mixed with roses.  Pleasure is now the principal remaining part of your education.  It will soften and polish your manners; it will make you pursue and at last overtake the graces.  Pleasure is necessarily reciprocal; no one feels, who does not at the same time give it.  To be pleased one must please.  What pleases you in others,