ary of State; but, take my word for it, twice
your merit and knowledge, without the art of pleasing, would, at most,
raise you to the IMPORTANT POST of Resident at Hamburgh or Ratisbon. I
need not tell you now, for I often have, and your own discernment must
have told you, of what numberless little ingredients that art of pleasing
is compounded, and how the want of the least of them lowers the whole;
but the principal ingredient is, undoubtedly, 'la douceur dans le
manieres': nothing will give you this more than keeping company with your
superiors. Madame Lambert tells her son, Let your connections be with
people above you; by that means you will acquire a habit of respect and
politeness. With one's equals, one is apt to become negligent, and the
mind grows torpid. She advises him, too, to frequent those people, and to
see their inside; In order to judge of men, one must be intimately
connected; thus you see them without, a veil, and with their mere
every-day merit. A happy expression! It was for this reason that I have
so often advised you to establish and domesticate yourself, wherever you
can, in good houses of people above you, that you may see their EVERY-DAY
character, manners, habits, etc. One must see people undressed to judge
truly of their shape; when they are dressed to go abroad, their clothes
are contrived to conceal, or at least palliate the defects of it: as
full-bottomed wigs were contrived for the Duke of Burgundy, to conceal
his hump back. Happy those who have no faults to disguise, nor weaknesses
to conceal! there are few, if any such; but unhappy those who know little
enough of the world to judge by outward appearances. Courts are the best
keys to characters; there every passion is busy, every art exerted, every
character analyzed; jealousy, ever watchful, not only discovers, but
exposes, the mysteries of the trade, so that even bystanders 'y
apprennent a deviner'. There too the great art of pleasing is practiced,
taught, and learned with all its graces and delicacies. It is the first
thing needful there: It is the absolutely necessary harbinger of merit
and talents, let them be ever so great. There is no advancing a step
without it. Let misanthropes and would-be philosophers declaim as much as
they please against the vices, the simulation, and dissimulation of
courts; those invectives are always the result of ignorance, ill-humor,
or envy. Let them show me a cottage, where there are not the same vices