The former, from Mr. Harte; the latter, from Mr. Trevanion, who is
arrived here: they conspire to convince me that you employ your time well
at Leipsig. I am glad to find you consult your own interest and your own
pleasure so much; for the knowledge which you will acquire in these two
years is equally necessary for both. I am likewise particularly pleased
to find that you turn yourself to that sort of knowledge which is more
peculiarly necessary for your destination: for Mr. Harte tells me you
have read, with attention, Caillieres, Pequet, and Richelieu's "Letters."
The "Memoirs" of the Cardinal de Retz will both entertain and instruct
you; they relate to a very interesting period of the French history, the
ministry of Cardinal Mazarin, during the minority of Lewis XIV. The
characters of all the considerable people of that time are drawn, in a
short, strong, and masterly manner; and the political reflections, which
are most of them printed in italics, are the justest that ever I met
with: they are not the labored reflections of a systematical closet
politician, who, without the least experience of business, sits at home
and writes maxims; but they are the reflections which a great and able
man formed from long experience and practice in great business. They are
true conclusions, drawn from facts, not from speculations.

As modern history is particularly your business, I will give you some
rules to direct your study of it. It begins, properly with Charlemagne,
in the year 800. But as, in those times of ignorance, the priests and
monks were almost the only people that could or did write, we have
scarcely any histories of those times but such as they have been pleased
to give us, which are compounds of ignorance, superstition, and party
zeal. So that a general notion of what is rather supposed, than really
known to be, the history of the five or six following centuries, seems to
be sufficient; and much time would be but ill employed in a minute