When you return here, I am apt to think that you will find something better to do than to run to Mr. Osborne’s at Gray’s Inn, to pick up scarce books.  Buy good books and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads, for they may profit of the former.  But take care not to understand editions and title-pages too well.  It always smells of pedantry, and not always of learning.  What curious books I have—­they are indeed but few—­shall be at your service.  I have some of the old Collana, and the Machiavel of 1550.  Beware of the ‘Bibliomanie’.

In the midst of either your studies or your pleasures, pray never lose view of the object of your destination:  I mean the political affairs of Europe.  Follow them politically, chronologically, and geographically, through the newspapers, and trace up the facts which you meet with there to their sources:  as, for example, consult the treaties Neustadt and Abo, with regard to the disputes, which you read of every day in the public papers, between Russia and Sweden.  For the affairs of Italy, which are reported to be the objects of present negotiations, recur to the quadruple alliance of the year 1718, and follow them down through their several variations to the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748; in which (by the bye) you will find the very different tenures by which the Infant Don Philip, your namesake, holds Parma and Placentia.  Consult, also, the Emperor Charles the Sixth’s Act of Cession of the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, being a point which, upon the death of the present King of Spain, is likely to occasion some disputes; do not lose the thread of these matters; which is carried on with great ease, but if once broken, is resumed with difficulty.

Pray tell Mr. Harte, that I have sent his packet to Baron Firmian by Count Einsiedlen, who is gone from hence this day for Germany, and passes through Vienna in his way to Italy; where he is in hopes of crossing upon you somewhere or other.  Adieu, my friend.

LETTER CIX

London, March 29, O. S. 1750

My dear friend:  You are now, I suppose, at Naples, in a new scene of ‘Virtu’, examining all the curiosities of Herculaneum, watching the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, and surveying the magnificent churches and public buildings, by which Naples is distinguished.

You have a court there into the bargain, which, I hope, you frequent and attend to.  Polite manners, a versatility of mind, a complaisance even to enemies, and the ‘volto sciolto’, with the ‘pensieri stretti’, are only to be learned at courts, and must be well learned by whoever would either shine or thrive in them.  Though they do not change the nature, they smooth and soften the manners of mankind.  Vigilance, dexterity, and flexibility supply the place of natural force; and it is the ablest mind, not the