for remember, that knowing any language imperfectly, is very little better than not knowing it at all:  people being as unwilling to speak in a language which they do not possess thoroughly, as others are to hear them.  Your thoughts are cramped, and appear to great disadvantage, in any language of which you are not perfect master.  Let modern history share part of your time, and that always accompanied with the maps of the places in question; geography and history are very imperfect separately, and, to be useful, must be joined.

Go to the Duchess of Courland’s as often as she and your leisure will permit.  The company of women of fashion will improve your manners, though not your understanding; and that complaisance and politeness, which are so useful in men’s company, can only be acquired in women’s.

Remember always, what I have told you a thousand times, that all the talents in the world will want all their lustre, and some part of their use too, if they are not adorned with that easy good-breeding, that engaging manner, and those graces, which seduce and prepossess people in your favor at first sight.  A proper care of your person is by no means to be neglected; always extremely clean; upon proper occasions fine.  Your carriage genteel, and your motions graceful.  Take particular care of your manner and address, when you present yourself in company.  Let them be respectful without meanness, easy without too much familiarity, genteel without affectation, and insinuating without any seeming art or design.

You need not send me any more extracts of the German constitution; which, by the course of your present studies, I know you must soon be acquainted with; but I would now rather that your letters should be a sort of journal of your own life.  As, for instance, what company you keep, what new acquaintances you make, what your pleasures are; with your own reflections upon the whole:  likewise what Greek and Latin books you read and understand.  Adieu!

LETTERS TO HIS SON 1748

By the EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

on the Fine Art of becoming a

MAN OF THE WORLD

and a

Gentleman

LETTER XXIV

January 2, O. S. 1748.

Dear boy:  I am edified with the allotment of your time at Leipsig; which is so well employed from morning till night, that a fool would say you had none left for yourself; whereas, I am sure you have sense enough to know, that such a right use of your time is having it all to yourself; nay, it is even more, for it is laying it out to immense interest, which, in a very few years, will amount to a prodigious capital.