you
have with difficulty learned. I likewise desire, that while you are in
Germany, you will take all opportunities of conversing in German, which
is the only way of knowing that, or any other language, accurately. You
will also desire your German master to teach you the proper titles and
superscriptions to be used to people of all ranks; which is a point so
material, in Germany, that I have known many a letter returned unopened,
because one title in twenty has been omitted in the direction.

St. Thomas's day now draws near, when you are to leave Saxony and go to
Berlin; and I take it for granted, that if anything is yet wanting to
complete your knowledge of the state of that electorate, you will not
fail to procure it before you go away. I do not mean, as you will easily
believe, the number of churches, parishes, or towns; but I mean the
constitution, the revenues, the troops, and the trade of that electorate.
A few questions, sensibly asked, of sensible people, will produce you the
necessary informations; which I desire you will enter in your little
book, Berlin will be entirely a new scene to you, and I look upon it, in
a manner, as your first step into the great world; take care that step be
not a false one, and that you do not stumble at the threshold. You will
there be in more company than you have yet been; manners and attentions
will therefore be more necessary. Pleasing in company is the only way of
being pleased in it yourself. Sense and knowledge are the first and
necessary foundations for pleasing in company; but they will by no means
do alone, and they will never be perfectly welcome if they are not
accompanied with manners and attentions. You will best acquire these by
frequenting the companies of people of fashion; but then you must resolve
to acquire them, in those companies, by proper care and observation; for
I have known people, who, though they have frequented good company all
their lifetime, have done it in so inattentive and unobserving a manner,
as to be never the better for it, and to remain as disagreeable, as
awkward, and as vulgar, as if they had never seen any person of fashion.
When you go into good company (by good company is meant the people of the
first fashion of the place) observe carefully their turn, their manners,
their address; and conform your own to them. But this is not all neither;
go deeper still; observe their characters, and pray, as far as you can,
into both their hearts and