e autrefois'; who, by the way, I am assured, is now the prettiest
young fellow in Holland. Where one would gain people, remember that
nothing is little. Adieu.

LETTER CLXXI

LONDON, June 26, O. S. 1752.

MY DEAR FRIEND: As I have reason to fear, from your M last letter of the
18th, N. S., from Manheim, that all, or at least most of my letters to
you, since you left Paris, have miscarried; I think it requisite, at all
events, to repeat in this the necessary parts of those several letters,
as far as they relate to your future motions.

I suppose that this will either find you, or be but a few days before you
at Bonn, where it is directed; and I suppose too, that you have fixed
your time for going from thence to Hanover. If things TURN OUT WELL AT
HANOVER, as in my opinion they will, 'Chi sta bene non si muova', stay
there till a week or ten days before the King sets out for England; but,
should THEY TURN OUT ILL, which I cannot imagine, stay, however, a month,
that your departure may not seem a step of discontent or peevishness; the
very suspicion of which is by all means to be avoided. Whenever you leave
Hanover, be it sooner or be it later, where would you go? 'Lei Padrone',
and I give you your choice: would you pass the months of November and
December at Brunswick, Cassel, etc.? Would you choose to go for a couple
of months to Ratisbon, where you would be very well recommended to, and
treated by the King's Electoral Minister, the Baron de Behr, and where
you would improve your 'Jus publicum'? or would you rather go directly to
Berlin, and stay there till the end of the Carnival? Two or three months
at Berlin are, considering all circumstances, necessary for you; and the
Carnival months are the best; 'pour le reste decidez en dernier ressort,
et sans appel comme d'abus'. Let me know your decree, when you have
formed it. Your good or ill success at Hanover will have a very great
influence upon your subsequent character, figure, and fortune in the
world; therefore I confess that I am more anxious about it, than ever
bride was on her wedding night, when wishes, hopes, fears, and doubts,
tumultuously agitate, please, and terrify her. It is your first crisis:
the character which you will acquire there will, more or less, be that
which will abide by you for the rest of your life. You will be tried and
judged there, not as a boy, but as a man; and from that moment there is
no appeal for character; it is fixed. To for