9. From the time that you have had life, it has
been the principal and favourite object of mine to make you as perfect
as the imperfections of human nature will allow. In this view, I have
grudged no pains nor expense in your education, convinced that
education, more than nature, is the cause of that great difference which
you see in the characters of men. While you were a child I endeavoured
to form your heart habitually to virtue and honour, before your
understanding was capable of showing you their beauty and utility. Those
principles, which you then got, like your grammar rules, only by rote,
are now, I am persuaded, fixed and confirmed by reason.

My next object was sound and useful learning. All that remains for me
then to wish, to recommend, to inculcate, to order, and to insist upon,
is good breeding, without which all your other qualifications will be
lame, unadorned, and to a certain degree unavailing. And here I fear,
and have too much reason to believe, that you are greatly deficient. The
remainder of this letter, therefore, shall be--and it will not be the
last by a great many--upon the subject of good breeding.

A friend of yours and mine has very justly defined good breeding to be
the result of much good sense, some good nature, and a little
self-denial for the sake of others, and with a view to obtain the same
indulgence from them. Taking this for granted, as I think it cannot be
disputed, it is astonishing to me that anybody who has good sense and
good nature, and I believe you have both, can essentially fail in good
breeding. As to the modes of it, indeed, they vary according to persons
and places and circumstances, and are only to be acquired by observation
and experience; but the substance of it is everywhere and eternally the
same. Good manners are, to particular societies, what good morals are to
society in general; their cement and their security. And as laws are
enacted to enforce good morals, or, at least, to prevent the ill-effects
of bad ones, so there are certain rules of civility, universally implied
and received, to enforce good manners, and punish bad ones.

Mutual complaisances, attentions, and sacrifices of little conveniences,
are as natural an implied compact between civilised people as protection
and obedience are between kings and subjects; whoever, in either case,
violates that compact justly forfeits all advantages arising from it.
For my own part, I really think that, next to the