amonds: I have sent you by Sir James
Gray, the King's Minister, who will be at Venice about the middle of
September, my own diamond buckles; which are fitter for your young feet
than for my old ones: they will properly adorn you; they would only
expose me. If Sir James finds anybody whom he can trust, and who will be
at Venice before him, he will send them by that person; but if he should
not, and that you should be gone from Venice before he gets there, he
will in that case give them to your banker, Monsieur Cornet, to forward
to you, wherever you may then be. You are now of an age, at which the
adorning your person is not only not ridiculous, but proper and becoming.
Negligence would imply either an indifference about pleasing, or else an
insolent security of pleasing, without using those means to which others
are obliged to have recourse. A thorough cleanliness in your person is as
necessary for your own health, as it is not to be offensive to other
people. Washing yourself, and rubbing your body and limbs frequently with
a fleshbrush, will conduce as much to health as to cleanliness. A
particular attention to the cleanliness of your mouth, teeth, hands, and
nails, is but common decency, in order not to offend people's eyes and
noses.

I send you here inclosed a letter of recommendation to the Duke of
Nivernois, the French Ambassador at Rome; who is, in my opinion, one of
the prettiest men I ever knew in my life. I do not know a better model
for you to form yourself upon; pray observe and frequent him as much as
you can. He will show you what manners and graces are. I shall, by
successive posts, send you more letters, both for Rome and Naples, where
it will be your own fault entirely if you do not keep the very best
company.

As you will meet swarms of Germans wherever you go, I desire that you
will constantly converse with them in their own language, which will
improve you in that language, and be, at the same time, an agreeable
piece of civility to them.

Your stay in Italy will, I do not doubt, make you critically master of
Italian; I know it may, if you please, for it is a very regular, and
consequently a very easy language. Adieu! God bless you!

LETTER LXXV

LONDON, July 20, O. S. 1749.

DEAR BOY: I wrote to Mr. Harte last Monday, the 17th, O. S., in answer to
his letter of the 20th June, N. S., which I had received but the day
before, after an interval of eight posts; during which I did not know