Live, dwell, and grow at the several courts there; use them so much to your face, that they may not look upon you as a stranger.  Observe, and take their ‘ton’, even to their affectations and follies; for such there are, and perhaps should be, at all courts.  Stay, in all events, at Berlin, till I inform you of Sir Charles Williams’s arrival at Dresden; where I suppose you would not care to be before him, and where you may go as soon after him as ever you please.  Your time there will neither be unprofitably nor disagreeably spent; he will introduce you into all the best company, though he can introduce you to none so good as his own.  He has of late applied himself very seriously to foreign affairs, especially those of Saxony and Poland; he knows them perfectly well, and will tell you what he knows.  He always expresses, and I have good reason to believe very sincerely, great kindness and affection for you.

The works of the late Lord Bolingbroke are just published, and have plunged me into philosophical studies; which hitherto I have not been much used to, or delighted with; convinced of the futility of those researches; but I have read his “Philosophical Essay” upon the extent of human knowledge, which, by the way, makes two large quartos and a half.  He there shows very clearly, and with most splendid eloquence, what the human mind can and cannot do; that our understandings are wisely calculated for our place in this planet, and for the link which we form in the universal chain of things; but that they are by no means capable of that degree of knowledge, which our curiosity makes us search after, and which our vanity makes us often believe we arrive at.  I shall not recommend to you the reading of that work; but, when you return hither, I shall recommend to your frequent and diligent perusal all his tracts that are relative to our history and constitution; upon which he throws lights, and scatters graces, which no other writer has ever done.

Reading, which was always a pleasure to me, in the time even of my greatest dissipation, is now become my only refuge; and, I fear, I indulge it too much at the expense of my eyes.  But what can I do?  I must do something; I cannot bear absolute idleness; my ears grow every day more useless to me, my eyes consequently more necessary; I will not hoard them like a miser, but will rather risk the loss, than not enjoy the use of them.

Pray let me know all the particulars, not only of your reception at Munich, but also at Berlin; at the latter, I believe, it will be a good one; for his Prussian Majesty knows, that I have long been an admirer and respecter of his great and various talents.  Adieu.

LETTER CXCIV

London, February 1, 1754