LETTER LXXXVI

LONDON, October 17, O. S. 1749.

DEAR BOY: I have at last received Mr. Harte's letter of the 19th
September, N. S., from Verona. Your reasons for leaving that place were
very good ones; and as you stayed there long enough to see what was to be
seen, Venice (as a capital) is, in my opinion, a much better place for
your residence. Capitals are always the seats of arts and sciences, and
the best companies. I have stuck to them all my lifetime, and I advise
you to do so too.

You will have received in my three or four last letters my directions for
your further motions to another capital, where I propose that your stay
shall be pretty considerable. The expense, I am well aware, will be so
too; but that, as I told you before, will have no weight when your
improvement and advantage are in the other scale. I do not care a groat
what it is, if neither vice nor folly are the objects of it, and if Mr.
Harte gives his sanction.

I am very well pleased with your account of Carniola; those are the kind
of objects worthy of your inquiries and knowledge. The produce, the
taxes, the trade, the manufactures, the strength, the weakness, the
government of the several countries which a man of sense travels through,
are the material points to which he attends; and leaves the steeples, the
market-places, and the signs, to the laborious and curious researches of
Dutch and German travelers.

Mr. Harte tells me, that he intends to give you, by means of Signor