amphitheatre at Verona is worth your attention; as are also many
buildings there and at Vicenza, of the famous Andrea Palladio, whose
taste and style of buildings were truly antique. It would not be amiss,
if you employed three or four days in learning the five orders of
architecture, with their general proportions; and you may know all that
you need know of them in that time. Palladio's own book of architecture
is the best you can make use of for that purpose, skipping over the
mechanical part of it, such as the materials, the cement, etc.

Mr. Harte tells me, that your acquaintance with the classics is renewed;
the suspension of which has been so short, that I dare say it has
produced no coldness. I hope and believe, you are now so much master of
them, that two hours every day, uninterruptedly, for a year or two more,
will make you perfectly so; and I think you cannot now allot them a
greater share than that of your time, considering the many other things
you have to learn and to do. You must know how to speak and write Italian
perfectly; you must learn some logic, some geometry, and some astronomy;
not to mention your exercises, where they are to be learned; and, above
all, you must learn the world, which is not soon learned; and only to be
learned by frequenting good and various companies.

Consider, therefore, how precious every moment of time is to you now. The
more you apply to your business, the more you will taste your pleasures.
The exercise of the mind in the morning whets the appetite for the
pleasures of the evening, as much as the exercise of the body whets the
appetite for dinner. Business and pleasure, rightly understood, mutually
assist each other, instead of being enemies, as silly or dull people
often think them. No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them
by previous business, and few people do business well, who do nothing
else. Remember that when I speak of pleasures, I always mean the elegant
pleasures of a rational being, and, not the brutal ones of a swine. I
mean 'la bonne Chere', short of gluttony; wine, infinitely short of
drunkenness; play, without the least gaming; and gallantry without
debauchery. There is a line in all these things which men of sense, for
greater security, take care to keep a good deal on the right side of; for
sickness, pain, contempt and infamy, lie immediately on the other side of
it. Men of sense and merit, in all other respects, may have had some of
these