WOMEN OF FASHION.--They are a numerous and loquacious body; their hatred would be more prejudicial than their friendship can be advantageous to you. A general complaisance and attention to that sex is, therefore, established by custom, and certainly necessary. But where you would particularly please any one, whose situation, interest, or connections can be of use to you, you must show particular preference. The least attentions please, the greatest charm them. The innocent but pleasing flattery of their persons, however gross, is greedily swallowed, and kindly digested, but a seeming regard for their understandings, a seeming desire of, and deference for, their advice, together with a seeming confidence in their moral virtues, turns their head entirely in your favor. Nothing shocks them so much as the least appearance of that contempt, which they are apt to suspect men of entertaining of their capacities; and you may be very sure of gaining their friendship, if you seem to think it worth gaining. Here dissimulation is very often necessary, and even simulation sometimes allowable; which, as it pleases them, may be useful to you and is injurious to nobody. [_Same date._] VENETIAN ART.--The time you will probably pass at Venice will allow you to make yourself master of that intricate and singular form of government, which few of our travellers know anything of. Read, ask, and see everything that is relative to it. There are, likewise, many valuable remains of the remotest antiquity, and many fine pieces of the _antico moderno_, all which deserve a different sort of attention from that which your countrymen commonly give them. They go to see them as they go to see the lions, and kings on horseback, at the Tower here, only to say that they have seen them. You will, I am sure, view them in another light; you will consider them as you would a poem, to which indeed they are akin. You will observe whether the sculptor has animated his stone, or the painter his canvas, into the just expression of those sentiments and passions which should characterize and mark their several figures. [_June 22, 1749._] SCULPTURE AND PAINTING.--You will examine, likewise, whether, in their groups there be a unity of action or proper relation; a truth of dress and manners. Sculpture and painting are very justly called liberal arts; a lively and strong imagination, together with a just observation being absolutely necessary to excel in either, which, in my opinion, is by no means the case of music, though called a liberal art, and now in Italy placed even above the other two--a proof of the decline of that country. A taste of sculpture and painting is, in my mind, as becoming as a taste of fiddling and piping is unbecoming a man of fashion. The former is connected with history and poetry; the latter, with nothing that I know of, but bad company. [_Same date._]