ns; with address enough to refuse, without
offending, or, by your manner of granting, to double the obligation;
dexterity enough to conceal a truth without telling a lie; sagacity
enough to read other people's countenances; and serenity enough not to
let them discover anything by yours; a seeming frankness with a real
reserve. These are the rudiments of a politician; the world must be your
grammar.

Three mails are now due from Holland; so that I have no letters from you
to acknowledge. I therefore conclude with recommending myself to your
favor and protection when you succeed. Yours.

LETTER XXVI

LONDON, January 29, O. S. 1748.

DEAR BOY: I find, by Mr. Harte's last letter, that many of my letters to
you and him, have been frozen up on their way to Leipsig; the thaw has, I
suppose, by this time, set them at liberty to pursue their journey to
you, and you will receive a glut of them at once. Hudibras alludes, in
this verse,

"Like words congealed in northern air,"

to a vulgar notion, that in Greenland words were frozen in their
utterance; and that upon a thaw, a very mixed conversation was heard in
the air, of all those words set at liberty. This conversation was, I
presume, too various and extensive to be much attended to: and may not
that be the case of half a dozen of my long letters, when you receive
them all at once? I think that I can, eventually, answer that question,
thus: If you consider my letters in their true light, as conveying to you
the advice of a friend, who sincerely wishes your happiness, and desires
to promote your pleasure, you will both read and attend to them; but, if
you consider them in their opposite, and very false light, as the
dictates of a morose and sermonizing father, I am sure they will be not
only unattended to, but unread. Which is the case, you can best tell me.
Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it
the least. I hope that your want of experience, of which you must be
conscious, will convince you, that you want advice; and that your good
sense will incline you to follow it.

Tell me how you pass your leisure hours at Leipsig; I know you have not
many; and I have too good an opinion of you to think, that, at this age,
you would desire more. Have you assemblies, or public spectacles? and of
what kind are they? Whatever they are, see them all; seeing everything,
is the only way not to admire anything too much.

If you ever take u