solicitous to know how you carry on your
business. While Mr. Harte was your partner, the care was his share, and
the profit yours. But at Paris, if you will have the latter, you must
take the former along with it. It will be quite a new world to you; very
different from the little world that you have hitherto seen; and you will
have much more to do in it. You must keep your little accounts constantly
every morning, if you would not have them run into confusion, and swell
to a bulk that would frighten you from ever looking into them at all. You
must allow some time for learning what you do not know, and some for
keeping what you do know; and you must leave a great deal of time for
your pleasures; which (I repeat it, again) are now become the most
necessary part of your education. It is by conversations, dinners,
suppers, entertainments, etc., in the best companies, that you must be
formed for the world. 'Les manieres les agremens, les graces' cannot be
learned by theory; they are only to be got by use among those who have
them; and they are now the main object of your life, as they are the
necessary steps to your fortune. A man of the best parts, and the
greatest learning, if he does not know the world by his own experience
and observation, will be very absurd; and consequently very unwelcome in
company. He may say very good things; but they will probably be so
ill-timed, misplaced, or improperly addressed, that he had much better
hold his tongue. Full of his own matter, and uninformed of; or
inattentive to, the particular circumstances and situations of the
company, he vents it indiscriminately; he puts some people out of
countenance; he shocks others; and frightens all, who dread what may come
out next. The most general rule that I can give you for the world, and
which your experience will convince you of the truth of, is, Never to
give the tone to the company, but to take it from them; and to labor more
to put them in conceit with themselves, than to make them admire you.
Those whom you can make like themselves better, will, I promise you, like
you very well.

A system-monger, who, without knowing anything of the world by
experience, has formed a system, of it in his dusty cell, lays it down,
for example, that (from the general nature of mankind) flattery is
pleasing. He will therefore flatter. But how? Why, indiscriminately. And
instead of repairing and heightening the piece judiciously, with soft
colors and a delica