ousness of power gives them. As in this
case, so in all others, aim always at the highest; get always into the
highest company, and address yourself particularly to the highest in it.
The search after the unattainable philosopher's stone has occasioned a
thousand useful discoveries, which otherwise would never have been made.

What the French justly call 'les manieres nobles' are only to be acquired
in the very best companies. They are the distinguishing characteristics
of men of fashion: people of low education never wear them so close, but
that some part or other of the original vulgarism appears. 'Les manieres
nobles' equally forbid insolent contempt, or low envy and jealousy. Low
people, in good circumstances, fine clothes, and equipages, will
insolently show contempt for all those who cannot afford as fine clothes,
as good an equipage, and who have not (as their term is) as much money in
their pockets: on the other hand, they are gnawed with envy, and cannot
help discovering it, of those who surpass them in any of these articles;
which are far from being sure criterions of merit. They are likewise
jealous of being slighted; and, consequently, suspicious and captious;
they are eager and hot about trifles because trifles were, at first,
their affairs of consequence. 'Les manieres nobles' imply exactly the
reverse of all this. Study them early; you cannot make them too habitual
and familiar to you.

Just as I had written what goes before, I received your letter of the
24th, N. S., but I have not received that which you mention for Mr.
Harte. Yours is of the kind that I desire; for I want to see your private
picture, drawn by yourself, at different sittings; for though, as it is
drawn by yourself, I presume you will take the most advantageous
likeness, yet I think that I have skill enough in that kind of painting
to discover the true features, though ever so artfully colored, or thrown
into skillful lights and shades.

By your account of the German play, which I do not know whether I should
call tragedy or comedy, the only shining part of it (since I am in a way
of quibbling) seems to have been the fox's tail. I presume, too, that the
play has had the same fate with the squib, and has gone off no more. I
remember a squib much better applied, when it was made the device of the
colors of a French regiment of grenadiers; it was represented bursting,
with this motto under it: 'Peream dum luceam'.

I like the description