politeness,
which are so useful in men's company, can only be acquired in women's.

Remember always what I have told you a thousand times, that all the
talents in the world will want all their lustre, and some part of their
use, too, if they are not advanced with that easy good-breeding, that
engaging manner, and those graces, which seduce and prepossess people in
your favour at first sight. A proper care of your person is by no means
to be neglected; always extremely clean; upon proper occasions, fine.
Your carriage genteel, and your motions graceful. Take particular care
of your manners and address when you present yourself in company. Let
them be respectful without meanness, easy without too much familiarity,
genteel without affectation, and insinuating without any seeming art or
design.... Adieu!

_II.--On the Art of Pleasing_

_Bath, March_ 9, 1748. I must from time to time remind you of what I
have often recommended to you, and of what you cannot attend to too
much: sacrifice to the graces. Intrinsic merit alone will not do; it
will gain you the general esteem of all, but not the particular
affection, that is the heart, of any. To engage the affections of any
particular person you must, over and above your general merit, have some
particular merit to that person; by services done, or offered; by
expressions of regard and esteem; by complaisance, attentions, etc., for
him; and the graceful manner of doing all these things opens the way to
the heart, and facilitates, or rather, insures, their effects.

A thousand little things, not separately to be described, conspire to
form these graces, this _je ne scais quoi,_ that always pleases. A
pretty person, a proper degree of dress, an harmonious voice, something
open and cheerful in the countenance, but without laughing; a distinct
and properly varied manner of speaking; all these things and many others
are necessary ingredients in the composition of the pleasing _je ne
scais quoi_, which everybody feels, though nobody can describe. Observe
carefully, then, what displeases or pleases you in others, and be
persuaded that, in general, the same things will please or displease
them in you.

Having mentioned laughing, I must particularly warn you against it; and
I would heartily wish that you may often be seen to smile, but never
heard to laugh while you live. Frequent and loud laughter is the
characteristic of folly and ill-manners; it is the manner in which the
mo