h the same fluency that you can
speak German? You cannot conceive what an advantage it will give you in
negotiations to possess Italian, German, and French perfectly, so as to
understand all the force and finesse of those three languages. If two men
of equal talents negotiate together, he who best understands the language
in which the negotiation is carried on, will infallibly get the better of
the other. The signification and force of one single word is often of
great consequence in a treaty, and even in a letter.

Remember the GRACES, for without them 'ogni fatica e vana'. Adieu.

LETTER CXIII

LONDON, May 17, O. S. 1750

MY DEAR FRIEND: Your apprenticeship is near out, and you are soon to set
up for yourself; that approaching moment is a critical one for you, and
an anxious one for me. A tradesman who would succeed in his way, must
begin by establishing a character of integrity and good manners; without
the former, nobody will go to his shop at all; without the latter, nobody
will go there twice. This rule does not exclude the fair arts of trade.
He may sell his goods at the best price he can, within certain bounds. He
may avail himself of the humor, the whims, and the fantastical tastes of
his customers; but what he warrants to be good must be really so, what he
seriously asserts must be true, or his first fraudulent profits will soon
end in a bankruptcy. It is the same in higher life, and in the great
business of the world. A man who does not solidly establish, and really
deserve, a character of truth, probity, good manners, and good morals, at
his first setting out in the world, may impose, and shine like a meteor
for a very short time, but will very soon vanish, and be extinguished
with contempt. People easily pardon, in young men, the common
irregularities of the senses: but they do not forgive the least vice of
the heart. The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse;
always harder. A young liar will be an old one; and a young knave will
only be a greater knave as he grows older. But should a bad young heart,
accompanied with a good head (which, by the way, very seldom is the
case), really reform in a more advanced age, from a consciousness of its
folly, as well as of its guilt; such a conversion would only be thought
prudential and political, but never sincere. I hope in God, and I verily.
believe, that you want no moral virtue. But the possession of all the
moral virtues, in 'actu primo',