I do not mean that you should plod hours together in researches of this kind:  no, you may employ your time more usefully:  but I mean, that you should make the most of the moments you do employ, by method, and the pursuit of one single object at a time; nor should I call it a digression from that object, if when you meet with clashing and jarring pretensions of different princes to the same thing, you had immediately recourse to other books, in which those several pretensions were clearly stated; on the contrary, that is the only way of remembering those contested rights and claims:  for, were a man to read ‘tout de suite’, Schwederus’s ‘Theatrum Pretensionum’, he would only be confounded by the variety, and remember none of them; whereas, by examining them occasionally, as they happen to occur, either in the course of your historical reading, or as they are agitated in your own times, you will retain them, by connecting them with those historical facts which occasioned your inquiry.  For example, had you read, in the course of two or three folios of Pretensions, those, among others, of the two Kings of England and Prussia to Oost Frise, it is impossible, that you should have remembered them; but now, that they are become the debated object at the Diet at Ratisbon, and the topic of all political conversations, if you consult both books and persons concerning them, and inform yourself thoroughly, you will never forget them as long as you live.  You will hear a great deal of them ow one side, at Hanover, and as much on the other side, afterward, at Berlin:  hear both sides, and form your own opinion; but dispute with neither.

Letters from foreign ministers to their courts, and from their courts to them, are, if genuine, the best and most authentic records you can read, as far as they go.  Cardinal d’Ossat’s, President Jeanin’s, D’Estrade’s, Sir William Temple’s, will not only inform your mind, but form your style; which, in letters of business, should be very plain and simple, but, at the same time, exceedingly clear, correct, and pure.

All that I have said may be reduced to these two or three plain principles:  1st, That you should now read very little, but converse a great deal; 2d, To read no useless, unprofitable books; and 3d, That those which you do read, may all tend to a certain object, and be relative to, and consequential of each other.  In this method, half an hour’s reading every day will carry you a great way.  People seldom know how to employ their time to the best advantage till they have too little left to employ; but if, at your age, in the beginning of life, people would but consider the value of it, and put every moment to interest, it is incredible what an additional fund of knowledge and pleasure such an economy would bring in.  I look back with regret upon that large sum of time, which, in my youth, I lavished away idly, without either improvement or pleasure.  Take warning betimes, and enjoy every moment; pleasures do not commonly last so long as life, and therefore should not be neglected; and the longest life is too short for knowledge, consequently every moment is precious.