Eximet curas.
--Horace.

The next morning I received a letter from my mother.

"My dear Henry," began my affectionate and incomparable parent--

"My dear Henry,

"You have now fairly entered the world, and though at your age my advice
may be but little followed, my experience cannot altogether be useless. I
shall, therefore, make no apology for a few precepts, which I hope may
tend to make you a wiser and better man.

"I hope, in the first place, that you have left your letter at the
ambassador's, and that you will not fail to go there as often as
possible. Pay your court in particular to Lady--She is a charming person,
universally popular, and one of the very few English people to whom one
may safely be civil. Apropos, of English civility, you have, I hope, by
this time discovered, that you have to assume a very different manner
with French people than with our own countrymen: with us, the least
appearance of feeling or enthusiasm is certain to be ridiculed every
where; but in France, you may venture to seem not quite devoid of all
natural sentiments: indeed, if you affect enthusiasm, they will give you
credit for genius, and they will place all the qualities of the heart to
the account of the head. You know that in England, if you seem desirous
of a person's acquaintance you are sure to lose it; they imagine you have
some design upon their wives or their dinners; but in France you can
never lose by politeness: nobody will call your civility forwardness and
pushing. If the Princess De T--, and the Duchesse de D--, ask you to