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Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman, 1750 by Earl of Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield
page 43 of 108 (39%)
panegyric, told me in his last a thing that pleases me extremely; which
was that at Rome you had constantly preferred the established Italian
assemblies to the English conventicles setup against them by dissenting
English ladies. That shows sense, and that you know what you are sent
abroad for. It is of much more consequence to know the 'mores multorem
hominum' than the 'urbes'. Pray continue this judicious conduct wherever
you go, especially at Paris, where, instead of thirty, you will find
above three hundred English, herding together and conversing with no one
French body.

The life of 'les Milords Anglois' is regularly, or, if you will,
irregularly, this. As soon as they rise, which is very late, they
breakfast together, to the utter loss of two good morning hours. Then
they go by coachfuls to the Palais, the Invalides, and Notre-Dame; from
thence to the English coffee-house, where they make up their tavern party
for dinner. From dinner, where they drink quick, they adjourn in clusters
to the play, where they crowd up the stage, dressed up in very fine
clothes, very ill-made by a Scotch or Irish tailor. From the play to the
tavern again, where they get very drunk, and where they either quarrel
among themselves, or sally forth, commit some riot in the streets, and
are taken up by the watch. Those who do not speak French before they go,
are sure to learn none there. Their tender vows are addressed to their
Irish laundress, unless by chance some itinerant Englishwoman, eloped
from her husband, or her creditors, defrauds her of them. Thus they
return home, more petulant, but not more informed, than when they left
it; and show, as they think, their improvement by affectedly both
speaking and dressing in broken French:--

"Hunc to Romane caveito."

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