If you know the world perfectly, you will find in it abundance of men valuable for their Talents, and as contemptible for their Failings. Expect not they should always exert their abilities, and discreetly cover their infirmities. You shall see them often slight their Virtues, and fondly indulge their Defects. It rests upon your judgment to make a better choice than themselves, and by your address, to draw from them that worth, which they could not easily communicate.
For these ten years past, which I have spent in foreign Countries, I have found as much Pleasure, and been as happy in the enjoyment of Conversation, as if I had been all the time in France. I have met with persons of as great worth as quality, whose Society has been the greatest comfort of my life. I have known men as witty as any I have ever seen, who have join'd the Pleasure of their Friendship, to that of their Company. I have known some Ambassadors of such bright parts, that they seem'd to me to make a considerable loss, whenever the duty of their Character suspended the exercise of their private excellencies.
I formerly thought that there were no well-bred and polite men but in our Court; that the effeminacy of warmer Climates, and a kind of barbarity in the colder, hinder'd the Natives from being rais'd to this pitch, except very rarely. But experience has, at length, convinc'd me, that there are such every where; and if I have not discover'd it soon enough, it is because it is difficult for a French Man to relish any but those of his own Country. Every Nation has its Excellence, with a certain turn proper and peculiar to its Genius. My Judgment, too much wedded to our own air, rejected as faulty what was foreign to us. Because we see them imitate us in the fashion of things exterior, we wou'd impose upon them the imita-
