LONDON,September 22,O.S.1752
MY DEAR FRIEND:The day after the date of my last,I received your letter of the 8th.I approve extremely of your intended progress,and am very glad that you go to the Gohr with Comte Schullemburg.I would have you see everything with your own eyes,and hear everything with your own ears:for I know,by very long experience,that it is very unsafe to trust to other people's.Vanity and interest cause many misrepresentations,and folly causes many more.Few people have parts enough to relate exactly and judiciously:and those who have,for some reason or other,never fail to sink,or to add some circumstances.
The reception which you have met with at Hanover,I look upon as an omen of your being well received everywhere else;for to tell you the truth,it was the place that I distrusted the most in that particular.But there is a certain conduct,there are certaines 'manieres'that will,and must get the better of all difficulties of that kind ;it is to acquire them that you still continue abroad,and go from court to court;they are personal,local,and temporal;they are modes which vary,and owe their existence to accidents,whim,and humor;all the sense and reason in the world would never point them out;nothing but experience,observation,and what is called knowledge of the world,can possibly teach them.For example,it is respectful to bow to the King of England,it is disrespectful to bow to the King of France;it is the rule to courtesy to the Emperor;and the prostration of the whole body is required by eastern monarchs.These are established ceremonies,and must be complied with:but why thev were established,I defy sense and reason to tell us.It is the same among all ranks,where certain customs are received,and must necessarily be complied with,though by no means the result of sense and reason.As for instance,the very absurd,though almost universal custom of drinking people's healths.Can there be anything in the world less relative to any other man's health,than my drinking a glass of wine?Common sense certainly never pointed it out;but yet common sense tells me I must conform to it.Good sense bids one be civil and endeavor to please;though nothing but experience and observation can teach one the means,properly adapted to time,place,and persons.This knowledge is the true object of a gentleman's traveling,if he travels as he ought to do.By frequenting good company in every country,he himself becomes of every country;he is no longer an Englishman,a Frenchman,or an Italian;but he is an European;he adopts,respectively,the best manners of every country;and is a Frenchman at Paris,an Italian at Rome,an Englishman at London.