I suppose that this will either find you, or be but a few days before you at Bonn, where it is directed; and I suppose too, that you have fixed your time for going from thence to Hanover.  If things turn out well at Hanover, as in my opinion they will, ‘Chi sta bene non si muova’, stay there till a week or ten days before the King sets out for England; but, should they turn out ill, which I cannot imagine, stay, however, a month, that your departure may not seem a step of discontent or peevishness; the very suspicion of which is by all means to be avoided.  Whenever you leave Hanover, be it sooner or be it later, where would you go?  ‘Lei Padrone’, and I give you your choice:  would you pass the months of November and December at Brunswick, Cassel, etc.?  Would you choose to go for a couple of months to Ratisbon, where you would be very well recommended to, and treated by the King’s Electoral Minister, the Baron de Behr, and where you would improve your ‘Jus publicum’? or would you rather go directly to Berlin, and stay there till the end of the Carnival?  Two or three months at Berlin are, considering all circumstances, necessary for you; and the Carnival months are the best; ’pour le reste decidez en dernier ressort, et sans appel comme d’abus’.  Let me know your decree, when you have formed it.  Your good or ill success at Hanover will have a very great influence upon your subsequent character, figure, and fortune in the world; therefore I confess that I am more anxious about it, than ever bride was on her wedding night, when wishes, hopes, fears, and doubts, tumultuously agitate, please, and terrify her.  It is your first crisis:  the character which you will acquire there will, more or less, be that which will abide by you for the rest of your life.  You will be tried and judged there, not as a boy, but as a man; and from that moment there is no appeal for character; it is fixed.  To form that character advantageously, you have three objects particularly to attend to:  your character as a man of morality, truth, and honor; your knowledge in the objects of your destination, as a man of business; and your engaging and insinuating address, air and manners, as a courtier; the sure and only steps to favor.

Merit at courts, without favor, will do little or nothing; favor, without merit, will do a good deal; but favor and merit together will do everything.  Favor at courts depends upon so many, such trifling, such unexpected, and unforeseen events, that a good courtier must attend to every circumstance, however little, that either does, or can happen; he must have no absences, no distractions; he must not say, “I did not mind it; who would have thought it?” He ought both to have minded, and to have thought it.  A chamber-maid has sometimes caused revolutions in courts which have produced others in kingdoms.  Were I to make my way to favor in a court, I would