even suspecting that they were so governed. This can only happen when
those people of inferior parts have more worldly dexterity and
experience, than those they govern. They see the weak and unguarded part,
and apply to it they take it, and all the rest follows. Would you gain
either men or women, and every man of sense desires to gain both, 'il
faut du monde'. You have had more opportunities than ever any man had, at
your age, of acquiring 'ce monde'. You have been in the best companies of
most countries, at an age when others have hardly been in any company at
all. You are master of all those languages, which John Trott seldom
speaks at all, and never well; consequently you need be a stranger
nowhere. This is the way, and the only way, of having 'du monde', but if
you have it not, and have still any coarse rusticity about you, may not
one apply to you the 'rusticus expectat' of Horace?

This knowledge of the world teaches us more particularly two things, both
which are of infinite consequence, and to neither of which nature
inclines us; I mean, the command of our temper, and of our countenance. A
man who has no 'monde' is inflamed with anger, or annihilated with shame,
at every disagreeable incident: the one makes him act and talk like a
madman, the other makes him look like a fool. But a man who has 'du
monde', seems not to understand what he cannot or ought not to resent. If
he makes a slip himself, he recovers it by his coolness, instead of
plunging deeper by his confusion like a stumbling horse. He is firm, but
gentle; and practices that most excellent maxim, 'suaviter in modo,
fortiter in re'. The other is the 'volto sciolto a pensieri stretti'.
People unused to the world have babbling countenances; and are unskillful
enough to show what they have sense enough not to tell. In the course of
the world, a man must very often put on an easy, frank countenance, upon
very disagreeable occasions; he must seem pleased when he is very much
otherwise; he must be able to accost and receive with smiles, those whom