POLITICAL IGNORANCE OF THE ENGLISH.--We are in general in England ignorant of foreign affairs and of the interests, views, pretensions, and policy of other courts. That part of knowledge never enters into our thoughts, nor makes part of our education; for which reason we have fewer proper subjects for foreign commissions than any other country in Europe; and, when foreign affairs happen to be debated in Parliament, it is incredible with how much ignorance. The harvest of foreign affairs being then so great, and the laborers so few, if you make yourself master of them, you will make yourself necessary: first as a foreign, and then as a domestic minister for that department. [_Feb. 9, 1748._] MY LORD’S DISLIKE OF VALETS.--I would neither have your new man nor him whom you have already, put out of livery, which makes them both impertinent and useless. I am sure that as soon as you shall have taken the other servant, your present man will press extremely to be out of livery, and valet de chambre, which is as much as to say, that he will curl your hair and shave you, but not condescend to do anything else. Therefore I advise you never to have a servant out of livery; and though you may not always think proper to carry the servant who dresses you abroad in the rain and dirt behind a coach or before a chair, you keep it in your power to do so, if you please, by keeping him in livery. [_Feb. 13, 1748._] LEARNED LEISURE.--The first use that I made of my liberty was to come hither [Bath], where I arrived yesterday. My health, though not fundamentally bad, yet, for want of proper attention of late, wanted some repairs, which these waters never fail giving it. I shall drink them a month, and return to London, there to enjoy the comforts of social life, instead of groaning under the load of business. I have given the description of the life that I propose to lead for the future in this motto, which I have put up in the frize (_sic_) of my library in my new house: “Nunc veterum libris, nunc somno, et inertibus horis Ducere sollicitæ jucunda oblivia vitæ.” I must observe to you upon this occasion, that the uninterrupted satisfaction which I expect to find in that library will be chiefly owing to my having employed some part of my life well at your age. I wish I had employed it better, and my satisfaction would now be complete. [_Feb. 16, 1748._]