contemporaries, that they cannot overtake you: they must be distanced. You may probably be placed about a young prince, who will probably be a young king. There all the various arts of pleasing, the engaging address, the versatility of manners, the brillant, the graces, will outweigh, and yet outrun all solid knowledge and unpolished merit. Oil yourself, therefore, and be both supple and shining, for that race, if you would be first, or early at the goal. Ladies will most probably too have something to say there; and those who are best with them will probably be best SOMEWHERE ELSE. Labor this great point, my dear child, indefatigably; attend to the very smallest parts, the minutest graces, the most trifling circumstances, that can possibly concur in forming the shining character of a complete gentleman, 'un galant homme, un homme de cour', a man of business and pleasure; 'estime des hommes, recherche des femmes, aime de tout le monde'. In this view, observe the shining part of every man of fashion, who is liked and esteemed; attend to, and imitate that particular accomplishment for which you hear him chiefly celebrated and distinguished: then collect those various parts, and make yourself a mosiac of the whole. No one body possesses everything, and almost everybody possesses some one thing worthy of imitation: only choose your models well; and in order to do so, choose by your ear more than by your eye. The best model is always that which is most universally allowed to be the best, though in strictness it may possibly not be so. We must take most things as they are, we cannot make them what we would, nor often what they should be; and where moral duties are not concerned, it is more prudent to follow than to attempt to lead. Adieu. LETTER CLXXXVIII BATH, October 3, 1753