and luster to both virtue and
knowledge. They prepare and smooth the way for the progress of both; and
are, I fear, with the bulk of mankind, more engaging than either.
Remember, then, the infinite advantage of manners; cultivate and improve
your own to the utmost good sense will suggest the great rules to you,
good company will do the rest. Thus you see how much you have to do; and
how little time to do it in: for when you are thrown out into the world,
as in a couple of years you must be, the unavoidable dissipation of
company, and the necessary avocations of some kind of business or other,
will leave you no time to undertake new branches of knowledge: you may,
indeed, by a prudent allotment of your time, reserve some to complete and
finish the building; but you will never find enough to lay new
foundations. I have such an opinion of your understanding, that I am
convinced you are sensible of these truths; and that, however hard and
laborious your present uninterrupted application may seem to you, you
will rather increase than lessen it. For God's sake, my dear boy, do not
squander away one moment of your time, for every moment may be now most
usefully employed. Your future fortune, character, and figure in the
world, entirely depend upon your use or abuse of the two next years. If
you do but employ them well, what may you not reasonably expect to be, in
time? And if you do not, what may I not reasonably fear you will be? You
are the only one I ever knew, of this country, whose education was, from
the beginning, calculated for the department of foreign affairs; in
consequence of which, if you will invariably pursue, and diligently
qualify yourself for that object, you may make yourself absolutely
necessary to the government, and, after having received orders as a
minister abroad, send orders, in your turn, as Secretary of State at
home. Most of our ministers abroad have taken up that department
occasionally, without having ever thought of foreign affairs before; many
of them, without speaking any one foreign language; and all of them
without manners which are absolutely necessary toward being well
received, and making a figure at foreign courts. They do the business
accordingly, that is, very ill: they never get into the secrets of these
courts, for want of insinuation and address: they do not guess at their
views, for want of knowing their interests: and, at last, finding
themselves very unfit for, soon grow weary of