XXXIII. I have availed myself many times of this resource at court; where I have made no scruple to declare, that I was born and bred in a small country town; and that I early entered myself a member of a religious order, whose principal care it was, to seclude its sons, and especially in their youth, from all commerce with the world. That my genius naturally disposed me to abhor bustle, and avoid great concourses of people; and excepting three years that I was a student at Salamanca, which may not improperly be termed three years of solitude, on account of the heads of our college not permitting their young members to have the least intercourse with secular people; I say excepting these three years, I have lived all the rest of my life, in Galicia and Asturias, which are provinces at a great distance from court; and besides all this, I have a natural dislike to studying ceremonies; but I am aware however, that not only the substance, but the forms of them also, are necessary to political society; although I do not consider that as an important form, which consists of rules that are established to-day, and changed to-morrow, just as whim and caprice dictate; some of which forms, or modes, prevail in one country, and are different in another; but I mean to speak of those forms or modes only, which reason dictates should be observed in all times, and in all places. From the before-named declaration, it may be easily conceived how little I understand of courtly ceremonies; notwithstanding which, with the assistance of the above frank confession, I never found myself the least embarrassed, and I perceived, nothing I said or did appeared disagreeable to those I conversed with, but that rather on the contrary, my natural behaviour seemed pleasing to them. XXXIV. Men of sublime spirits and elevated understanding, possess a natural privilege to dispense with formalities whenever they think proper; just as musicians of great genius are allowed upon many occasions, to depart from the common rules of their art; their doing which, hardly ever renders the music ungrateful to the ear; so men who are endowed with great talents, and display a manifest superiority in conversation, may dispense with the ordinary and common methods of speaking, without ever offending the ears of their auditors. Natural advantages shine forth with a greater lustre, and are more solid, and more pleasing than borrowed acquisitions. Thus the world are well satisfied, to accept the first in the room of the last, and look upon themselves as over-paid for the loss of the one, by the introduction of the other in its stead.