e trouble I have
taken to write it. Adieu! Yours.

LETTER XXXVIII

LONDON, May 10, O. S. 1748.

DEAR BOY: I reckon that this letter will find you just returned from
Dresden, where you have made your first court caravanne. What inclination
for courts this taste of them may have given you, I cannot tell; but this
I think myself sure of, from your good sense, that in leaving Dresden,
you have left dissipation too; and have resumed at Leipsig that
application which, if you like courts, can alone enable you to make a
good figure at them. A mere courtier, without parts or knowledge, is the
most frivolous and contemptible of all beings; as, on the other hand, a
man of parts and knowledge, who acquires the easy and noble manners of a
court, is the most perfect. It is a trite, commonplace observation, that
courts are the seats of falsehood and dissimulation. That, like many, I
might say most, commonplace observations, is false. Falsehood and
dissimulation are certainly to be found at courts; but where are they not
to be found? Cottages have them, as well as courts; only with worse
manners. A couple of neighboring farmers in a village will contrive and
practice as many tricks, to over-reach each other at the next market, or
to supplant each other in the favor, of the squire, as any two courtiers
can do to supplant each other in the favor of their prince.

Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth,
and of the perfidy of courts, this is most undoubtedly true that
shepherds and ministers are both men; their nature and passions the same,
the modes of them only different.

Having mentioned commonplace observations, I will particularly caution
you against either using, believing, or approving them. They are the
common topics of witlings and coxcombs; those, who really have wit, have
the utmost contempt for them, and scorn even to laugh at the pert things
that those would-be wits say upon such subjects.

Religion is one of their favorite topics; it is all priest-craft; and an
invention contrived and carried on by priests of all religions, for their
own power and profit; from this absurd and false principle flow the
commonplace, insipid jokes, and insults upon the clergy. With these
people, every priest, of every religion, is either a public or a
concealed unbeliever, drunkard, and whoremaster; whereas, I conceive,
that priests are extremely like other men, and neither the better nor the
worse