his hump back.  Happy those who have no faults to disguise, nor weaknesses to conceal! there are few, if any such; but unhappy those who know little enough of the world to judge by outward appearances.  Courts are the best keys to characters; there every passion is busy, every art exerted, every character analyzed; jealousy, ever watchful, not only discovers, but exposes, the mysteries of the trade, so that even bystanders ’y apprennent a deviner’.  There too the great art of pleasing is practiced, taught, and learned with all its graces and delicacies.  It is the first thing needful there:  It is the absolutely necessary harbinger of merit and talents, let them be ever so great.  There is no advancing a step without it.  Let misanthropes and would-be philosophers declaim as much as they please against the vices, the simulation, and dissimulation of courts; those invectives are always the result of ignorance, ill-humor, or envy.  Let them show me a cottage, where there are not the same vices of which they accuse courts; with this difference only, that in a cottage they appear in their native deformity, and that in courts, manners and good-breeding make them less shocking, and blunt their edge.  No, be convinced that the good-breeding, the ’tournure, la douceur dans les manieres’, which alone are to be acquired at courts, are not the showish trifles only which some people call or think them; they are a solid good; they prevent a great deal of real mischief; they create, adorn, and strengthen friendships; they keep hatred within bounds; they promote good-humor and good-will in families, where the want of good-breeding and gentleness of manners is commonly the original cause of discord.  Get then, before it is too late, a habit of these ‘mitiores virtutes’:  practice them upon every, the least occasion, that they may be easy and familiar to you upon the greatest; for they lose a great degree of their merit if they seem labored, and only called in upon extraordinary occasions.  I tell you truly, this is now the only doubtful part of your character with me; and it is for that reason that I dwell upon it so much, and inculcate it so often.  I shall soon see whether this doubt of mine is founded; or rather I hope I shall soon see that it is not.

This moment I receive your letter of the 9th N. S. I am sorry to find that you have had, though ever so slight a return of your Carniolan disorder; and I hope your conclusion will prove a true one, and that this will be the last.  I will send the mohairs by the first opportunity.  As for the pictures, I am already so full, that I am resolved not to buy one more, unless by great accident I should meet with something surprisingly good, and as surprisingly cheap.

I should have thought that Lord-------, at his age, and with his parts
and address, need not have been reduced to keep an opera w—–­e, in such a
place as Paris, where so many women of fashion generously serve as
volunteers.  I am still more sorry that he is in love with her; for that
will take him out of good company, and sink him into bad; such as
fiddlers, pipers, and ‘id genus omne’; most unedifying and unbecoming
company for a man of fashion!

Lady Chesterfield makes you a thousand compliments.  Adieu, my dear child.