you to know them all; for, as I have often told you, ‘olim haec meminisse juvabit’.  There is an utility in having seen what other people have seen, and there is a justifiable pride in having seen what others have not seen.  In the former case, you are equal to others; in the latter, superior.  As your stay abroad will not now be very long, pray, while it lasts, see everything and everybody you can, and see them well, with care and attention.  It is not to be conceived of what advantage it is to anybody to have seen more things, people, and countries, than other people in general have; it gives them a credit, makes them referred to, and they become the objects of the attention of the company.  They are not out in any part of polite conversation; they are acquainted with all the places, customs, courts, and families that are likely to be mentioned; they are, as Monsieur de Maupertuis justly observes, ’de tous les pays, comme les savans, sont de tous les tems’.  You have, fortunately, both those advantages:  the only remaining point is ‘de savoir les faire valoir’, for without that one may as well not have them.  Remember that very true maxim of La Bruyere’s, ‘Qu’on ne vaut dans se monde que ce qu’on veut valoir’.  The knowledge of the world will teach you to what degree you ought to show ’que vous valez’.  One must by no means, on one hand, be indifferent about it; as, on the other, one must not display it with affectation, and in an overbearing manner, but, of the two, it is better to show too much than too little.  Adieu.

LETTER CCII

Bath, November 27, 1754

My dear friend:  I heartily congratulate you upon the loss of your political maidenhead, of which I have received from others a very good account.  I hear that you were stopped for some time in your career; but recovered breath, and finished it very well.  I am not surprised, nor indeed concerned, at your accident; for I remember the dreadful feeling of that situation in myself; and as it must require a most uncommon share of impudence to be unconcerned upon such an occasion, I am not sure that I am not rather glad you stopped.  You must therefore now think of hardening yourself by degrees, by using yourself insensibly to the sound of your own voice, and to the act (trifling as it seems) of rising up and sitting down.  Nothing will contribute so much to this as committee work of elections at night, and of private bills in the morning.  There, asking short questions, moving for witnesses to be called in, and all that kind of small ware, will soon fit you to set up for yourself.  I am told that you are much mortified at your accident, but without reason; pray, let it rather be a spur than a curb to you.  Persevere, and, depend upon it, it will do well at last.  When I say persevere, I do not mean that you should speak every day, nor in every debate.  Moreover, I would not advise you to speak again upon public