MORAL CHARACTER. There is nothing so delicate as your moral character, and nothing that it is your interest so much to preserve pure. Should you be suspected of injustice, malignity, perfidy, lying, &c., all the parts and knowledge in the world will never procure you esteem, friendship, or respect. A strange concurrence of circumstances has sometimes raised very bad men to high stations; but they have been raised, like criminals to a pillory, where their persons and their crimes, by being more conspicuous, are only the more known, the more pelted and insulted. If in any case whatsoever, dissimulation were pardonable, it would be in the case of morality; though, even then, a Pharasaical pomp of virtue would not be advisable. But I will recommend to you a most scrupulous tenderness for your moral character, and the utmost care not to do or say anything that may ever so slightly taint it. Show yourself, upon all occasions, the advocate, the friend, but not the bully, of virtue. GOOD BREEDING. Observe the best and most well-bred of the French people; how agreeably they insinuate little civilities in their conversation. They think it so essential that they call an honest and a civil man by the same name, of “honnete homme;” and the Romans called civility, “humanitas,” as thinking it inseparable from humanity: and depend upon it, that your reputation and success will, in a great measure, depend upon the degree of good breeding of which you are master. From what has been said, I conclude with the observation, that gentleness of manners, with firmness of mind, is a short but full description of human perfection, on this side of religious and moral duties. Transcriber’s Notes A few minor errors in punctuation and spelling were corrected.