will in general please them in you.  Paris is indisputably the seat of the graces; they will even court you, if you are not too coy.  Frequent and observe the best companies there, and you will soon be naturalized among them; you will soon find how particularly attentive they are to the correctness and elegance of their language, and to the graces of their enunciation:  they would even call the understanding of a man in question, who should neglect or not know the infinite advantages arising from them.  ‘Narrer, reciter, declamer bien’, are serious studies among them, and well deserve to be so everywhere.  The conversations, even among the women, frequently turn upon the elegancies and minutest delicacies of the French language.  An ‘enjouement’, a gallant turn, prevails in all their companies, to women, with whom they neither are, nor pretend to be, in love; but should you (as may very possibly happen) fall really in love there with some woman of fashion and sense (for I do not suppose you capable of falling in love with a strumpet), and that your rival, without half your parts or knowledge, should get the better of you, merely by dint of manners, ‘enjouement, badinage’, etc., how would you regret not having sufficiently attended to those accomplishments which you despised as superficial and trifling, but which you would then find of real consequence in the course of the world!  And men, as well as women, are taken by those external graces.  Shut up your books, then, now as a business, and open them only as a pleasure; but let the great book of the world be your serious study; read it over and over, get it by heart, adopt its style, and make it your own.

When I cast up your account as it now stands, I rejoice to see the balance so much in your favor; and that the items per contra are so few, and of such a nature, that they may be very easily cancelled.  By way of debtor and creditor, it stands thus: 

Creditor.  By French Debtor.  To English
        German Enunciation
        Italian Manners
        Latin
        Greek
        Logic
        Ethics
        History
        |Naturae
      Jus |Gentium
        |Publicum

This, my dear friend, is a very true account; and a very encouraging one for you.  A man who owes so little can clear it off in a very little time, and, if he is a prudent man, will; whereas a man who, by long negligence, owes a great deal, despairs of ever being able to pay; and therefore never looks into his account at all.

When you go to Genoa, pray observe carefully all the environs of it, and view them with somebody who can tell you all the situations and operations of the Austrian army, during that famous siege, if it deserves to be called one; for in reality the town never was besieged, nor had the Austrians any one thing necessary for a siege.  If Marquis Centurioni, who was last winter in England, should happen to be there, go to him with my compliments, and he will show you all imaginable civilities.