the characters of men, as books can do.  I mean, ’Les Reflections Morales de Monsieur de la Rochefoucault, and Les Caracteres de la Bruyere’:  but remember, at the same time, that I only recommend them to you as the best general maps to assist you in your journey, and not as marking out every particular turning and winding that you will meet with.  There your own sagacity and observation must come to their aid.  La Rochefoucault, is, I know, blamed, but I think without reason, for deriving all our actions from the source of self-love.  For my own part, I see a great deal of truth, and no harm at all, in that opinion.  It is certain that we seek our own happiness in everything we do; and it is as certain, that we can only find it in doing well, and in conforming all our, actions to the rule of right reason, which is the great law of nature.  It is only a mistaken self-love that is a blamable motive, when we take the immediate and indiscriminate gratification of a passion, or appetite, for real happiness.  But am I blamable if I do a good action, upon account of the happiness which that honest consciousness will give me?  Surely not.  On the contrary, that pleasing consciousness is a proof of my virtue.  The reflection which is the most censured in Monsieur de la Rochefoucault’s book as a very ill-natured one, is this, ’On trouve dans le malheur de son meilleur ami, quelque chose qui ne des plait pas’.  And why not?  Why may I not feel a very tender and real concern for the misfortune of my friend, and yet at the same time feel a pleasing consciousness at having discharged my duty to him, by comforting and assisting him to the utmost of my power in that misfortune?  Give me but virtuous actions, and I will not quibble and chicane about the motives.  And I will give anybody their choice of these two truths, which amount to the same thing:  He who loves himself best is the honestest man; or, The honestest man loves himself best.

The characters of La Bruyere are pictures from the life; most of them finely drawn, and highly colored.  Furnish your mind with them first, and when you meet with their likeness, as you will every day, they will strike you the more.  You will compare every feature with the original; and both will reciprocally help you to discover the beauties and the blemishes.

As women are a considerable, or, at least a pretty numerous part of company; and as their suffrages go a great way toward establishing a man’s character in the fashionable part of the world (which is of great importance to the fortune and figure he proposes to make in it), it is necessary to please them.  I will therefore, upon this subject, let you into certain Arcana that will be very useful for you to know, but which you must, with the utmost care, conceal and never seem to know.  Women, then, are only children of a larger growth; they have an entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit; but for solid reasoning, good sense, I never knew in my life one that had it,