Italian Letters, vols 1,2 | Page 4

a moment's pain to another.
Do not however imagine, my dear count, that my partiality to this amiable young nobleman renders me insensible to the defects of his character. Though his temper be all sweetness and gentleness, his views are not the most extensive. He considers much more the present ease of those about him, than their future happiness. He has not harshness, he has not firmness enough in his character, shall I call it? to refuse almost any request, however injudicious. He is therefore often led into improper situations, and his reputation frequently suffers in a manner that I am persuaded his heart does not deserve.
The person of San Severino is tall, elegant and graceful. His manners are singularly polite, and uniformly unembarassed. His voice is melodious, and he is eminently endowed by nature with the gift of eloquence. A person of your penetration will therefore readily imagine, that his society is courted by the fair. His propensity to the tender passion appears to have been very great, and he of consequence lays himself out in a gallantry that I can by no means approve.
Such, my dear count, appears to me to be the genuine and impartial character of my new friend. His good nature, his benevolence, and the pliableness of his disposition may surely be allowed to compensate for many defects. He can indeed by no means supply the place of my St. Julian. I cannot look up to him as a guide, and I believe I shall never be weak enough to ask his advice in the conduct of my life.
But do not imagine, my dear lord, that I shall be in much danger of being misled by him into criminal irregularities. I feel a firmness of resolution, and an ardour in the cause of virtue, that will, I trust, be abundantly sufficient to set these poor temptations at defiance. The world, before I entered it, appeared to me more formidable than it really is. I had filled it with the bugbears of a wild imagination. I had supposed that mankind made it their business to prey upon each other. Pardon me, my amiable friend, if I take the liberty to say, that my St. Julian was more suspicious than he needed to have been, when he supposed that Naples could deprive me of the simplicity and innocence that grew up in my breast under his fostering hand at Palermo.

Letter IV
_The Count de St. Julian to the Marquis of Pescara_
Palermo I rejoice with you sincerely upon the pleasures you begin to find in the city of Naples. May all the days of my Rinaldo be happy, and all his paths be strewed with flowers! It would have been truly to be lamented, that melancholy should have preyed upon a person so young and so distinguished by fortune, or that you should have sighed amidst all the magnificence of Naples for the uncultivated plainness of Palermo. So long as I reside here, your absence will constantly make me feel an uneasy void, but it is my earnest wish that not a particle of that uneasiness may reach my friend.
Surely, my dear marquis, there are few correspondents so young as myself, and who address a personage so distinguished as you, that deal with so much honest simplicity, and devote so large a share of their communications to the forbidding seriousness of advice. But you have accepted the first effort of my friendship with generosity and candour, and you will, I doubt not, continue to behold my sincerity with a favourable eye.
Shall I venture to say that I am sorry you have commenced so intimate a connexion with the marquis of San Severino? Even the character of him with which you have favoured me, represents him to my wary sight as too agreeable not to be dangerous. But I have heard of him from others, a much more unpleasing account.
Alas, my friend, under how fair an outside are the most pernicious principles often concealed! Your honest heart would not suspect, that an appearance of politeness frequently covers the most rooted selfishness. The man who is all gentleness and compliance abroad, is often a tyrant among his domestics. The attendants upon a court put on their faces as they put on their clothes. And it is only after a very long acquaintance, after having observed them in their most unguarded hours, that you can make the smallest discovery of their real characters. Remember, my dear Rinaldo, the maxim of the incomparable philosopher of Geneva: "Man is not naturally amiable." If the human character shews less pleasing and attractive in the obscurity of retreat, and among the unfinished personages of a college, believe me, the natives of a court are not a whit more disinterested, or have more of the reality of friendship.