 Section 187 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son, read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter 226. Blackheath, July 18th, 1758. My dear friend, yesterday I received your letter of the fourth, and my last will have informed you that I had received your former, concerning the renish, about which I gave you instructions. If Venom Mosulanum est Omnitimporisanum, as the chapter of Trev asserts, what must this Venom renanum be, from its superior strength and age? It must be the universal panacea. Captain Howe is to sail forthwith, somewhere or other, with about eight thousand land-forces on board him, and what is much more, Edward the White Prince. It is yet a secret where they are going, but I think it is no secret, that what sixteen thousand men and a great fleet could not do, will not be done by eight thousand men and a much smaller fleet. About eighty-five hundred horse, foot, and dragoons are embarking, as fast as they can, for Emden, to reinforce Prince Ferdinand's army, late and few to be sure, but still better than never and none. The operations in Moravia go on slowly, and Omnit seems to be a tough piece of work. I own I begin to be in pain for the king of Prussia, for the Russians now march in earnest, and Marshal Dahn's army is certainly superior in number to his. God sent him a good delivery. You have a Danish army now in your neighborhood, and they say a very fine one. I presume you will go and see it, and if you do, I would advise you to go when the Danish monarch comes to review it himself. Pour prendre lang de ce seneur. The rulers of the earth are all worth knowing. They suggest moral reflections, and the respect that one naturally has for God's vice-regents here on earth, is greatly increased by acquaintance with them. Your card-tables are gone, and they enclose some suits of clothes, and some of these clothes enclose a letter. Your friend Lady is gone into the country with her lord, to negotiate, coolly and at leisure, their intended separation. My lady insists upon my lord's dismissing the as ruinous to his fortune. My lord insists in his turn upon my lady's dismissing lord. My lady replies that this is unreasonable, since lord creates no expense to the family, but rather the contrary. My lord confesses that there is some weight in this argument, but then pleads sentiment. My lady says a fiddle-stick for sentiment after having been married so long. How this matter will end is the womb of time, nam fuit ante Hellenum. You did very well to write a congratulatory letter to Prince Ferdinand. Such attentions are always right and always repaid in some way or other. I am glad you have connected your negotiations and anecdotes, and I hope, not with your usual laconism. Adieu, yours. Letter 227 Blackheath, August 1st, 1758 My dear friend, I think the Court of Castle is more likely to make you a second visit at Hamburg than you are to return theirs at Castle, and therefore till that matter is clearer I shall not mention it to Lord Holderness. By the King of Prussia's disappointment in Moravia, by the approach of the Russians, and the intended march of Monsieur de Zubis to Hanover, the waters seemed to me to be as much troubled as ever. Je vois très noir actuellement. I see swarms of Austrians, French, imperialists, Swedes, and Russians, in all near four hundred thousand men surrounding the King of Prussia and Prince Ferdinand, who have about a third of that number. Hitherto they have only buzzed, but now I fear they will sting. The immediate danger of this country is being drowned, for it has not ceased raining these three months, and with all is extremely cold. This neither agrees with me in itself nor in its consequences, for it hinders me from taking my necessary exercise and makes me very unwell. As my head is always the part of ending, and is so at present, I will not do, like many writers, right without a head. So adieu. Letter 228. Blackheath. August 29th, 1758. My dear friend, your secretary's last letter brought me the good news that the fever had left you, and I will believe that it has, but a postscript to it of only two lines under your own hand would have convinced me more effectually of your recovery. An intermittent fever, in the interval of the paroxysms, would surely have allowed you to have written a few lines with your own hand, to tell me how you were. Until I receive a letter as short as you please from you yourself, I shall doubt of the exact truth of any other accounts. I send you no news, because I have none. Kate Breton, Cherbourg, etc., are now old stories. We expect a new one soon from Commodore Howe, but from whence we know not. From Germany we hope for good news. I confess I do not, I only wish it. The King of Prussia is marched to fight the Russians, and I believe will beat them. If they stand, but what then? What shall he do next, with the three hundred and four score thousand men, now actually at work upon him? He will do all that men can do, but at last, il faut s'occuper. Remember to think yourself less well than you are, in order to be quite so. Be very regular, rather longer than you need, and then there will be no danger of a relapse. God bless you. My dear friend, I received with great pleasure your letter of the twenty-second August, for, by not having a line from you and your secretary's two letters, I suspect that you were worse than he cared to tell me. So far was I in the right, that your fever was more malignant than intermitting ones generally are, which seldom confines people to their bed, or at most only the days of the proxisms. Now that, thank God you are well again, though weak, do not be in too much haste to be better and stronger. Leave that to nature, which at your age will restore both your health and strength as soon as she should. Live cool for a time, and rather low, instead of taking what they call heartening things. Your manner of making presence is noble, et sans la grandeur d'un proche avalié. You depreciate their value to prevent any returns, for it is impossible that a wine which has counted so many syndics, that can only be delivered by a sennadas consultum, and is the panacea of the north, should be sold for a duket a bottle. The sylphium of the Romans, which was stored up in the public magazines, and only distributed by order of the magistrate, I dare say cost more, so that I am convinced your present is much more valuable than you would make it. Here I am interrupted by receiving your letter of the twenty-fifth past. I am glad that you are able to undertake your journey to Bremen. The motion, the air, the new scene, the everything will do you good, provided you manage yourself discreetly. Your bill for fifty pounds shall certainly be accepted and paid, but as in conscience I think fifty pounds is too little for seeing a live land grave, and especially at Bremen, which this whole nation knows to be a very dear place, I shall with your leave add fifty more to it. By the way, when you see the Princess Royal of Castle, be sure to tell her how sensible you are of the favourable and two-partial testimony which you know she wrote of you to Princess Emilia. The King of Prussia has had the victory, which you in some measure foretold, and as he has taken la casse militaire, I presume Monsieur Les Russes sont hors de combat pour cette campagne, pour point d'argent, point de suisse, is not truer of the laudable helvetic body, than point d'argent, point de Russes, is of the savages of the two Russes, not even accepting the autocratrice of them both. Sir Belloni, I believe, stands next in his Prussian Majesty's list to be beaten. That is, if he will stand, as the Prince de Subise does in Prince Ferdinand's upon the same condition. If both these things happen, which is by no means improbable, we may hope for a tolerable peace this winter, for, au bout du comte, the King of Prussia cannot hold out another year, and therefore he should make the best of these favourable events by way of negotiation. I think I have written a great deal, with an actual giddiness of head upon me, so adieu. I am glad you received my letter of the aides of July. My dear friend, this letter shall be short, being only an explanatory note upon my last, for I am not learned enough, nor yet dull enough, to make my comment much longer than my text. I told you, then, in my former letter, that with your leave, which I will suppose granted, I would add fifty pounds to your draft for that sum. Now lest you should misunderstand this, and wait for the remittance of that additional fifty from hence. Know then my meaning was, that you should likewise draw upon me for it when you please, which I presume will be more convenient to you. Let the pedants, whose business it is to believe lies, or the poets whose trade it is to invent them, match the King of Prussia with a hero in ancient or modern story if they can. He disgraces history, and makes one give some credit to romances. Calprinides Juba does not now seem so absurd as formerly. I have been extremely ill this whole summer, but am now something better. However I perceive, que l'esprit est le corps besoin. The former is the last thing that anybody will tell me, or own it when I tell them. But I know it is true. Adieu. Letter two hundred and thirty-one. Blackheath, September twenty-second, seventeen-fifty-eight. My dear friend, I have received no letter from you since you left Hamburg. I presume that you are perfectly recovered, but it might not have been improper to have told me so. I am very far from being recovered. On the contrary, I am worse and worse, weaker and weaker every day, for which reason I shall leave this place next Monday and set out for bath a few days afterward. I should not take all this trouble merely to prolong the fag end of a life from which I can expect no pleasure, and others no utility, but the cure or at least the mitigation of those physical ills which make that life a load while it does last is worth any trouble and attention. We are come off but scurvelly from our second attempt upon Sainte Malleau. It is our last for this season, and in my mind should be our last forever, unless we were to send so great a sea and land forces to give us a moral certainty of taking some place of great importance, such as Brest, Rochefort or Toulon. Monsieur Manchhausen embarked yesterday, as he said, for Prince Ferdinand's army. But as it is not generally thought that his military skill can be of any great use to that prince, people conjecture that his business must be of a very different nature, and suspect separate negotiations, neutralities and what not. Niphausen does not relish it in the least, and is by no means satisfied with the reasons that have been given him for it. Before he can arrive there I reckon that something decisive will have passed in Saxony, if to the disadvantage of the King of Prussia he is crushed, but if on the contrary he should get a complete victory, and he does not get half victories over the Austrians, the winter may probably produce him and us a reasonable peace. I look upon Russia as Ordecombe for some time. France is certainly sick of the war, under an unambitious king and an incapable ministry, if there is one at hand at all, and unassisted by those two powers the empress queen had better be quiet. Were any other man in the situation of the King of Prussia I should not hesitate to pronounce him ruined, but he is such a projody of a man that I will only say I fear he will be ruined. It is by this time decided. Your castle court at Bremen is, I doubt, not very splendid, money must be wanting, but, however, I dare say their table is always good, for the land grave is a gourmand, and as you are domestic there you may be so too, and recruit your loss of flesh from your fever, but do not recruit too fast. Adjou End of Section 188, read by Professor Heather and by. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 189 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter 232, London, September 26, 1758 My dear friend, I am sorry to find that you had a return of your fever, but to say the truth you in some measure deserved it, for not carrying Dr. Middleton's bark and prescription with you. I foresaw that you would think yourself cured too soon, and gave you warning of it, but bygones are bygones, as sharp when he was dying said of his sins. Let us look forward. You did very prudently to return to Hamburg, to good bark, and I hope a good physician. Take all shore there before you stir from thence, not withstanding the requests or commands of all the princesses in Europe. I mean a month at least, taking the bark even to super-arrogation, that is, some time longer than Dr. Middleton requires, for I presume that you are got over your childishness about tastes, and are sensible that your health deserves more attention than your palate. When you shall be thus re-established I approve of your returning to Bremen, and indeed you cannot well avoid it. Both with regard to your promise, and to the distinction with which you have been received by the castle family. Now to the other part of your letter. Lord Holderness has been extremely civil to you, in sending you, all under his own hand, such a blinding offers of his service. The hint is plain, that he will, in case you desire it, procure you leave to come home for some time, so that the single question is whether you should desire it or not, now. It will be two months before you can possibly undertake the journey, whether by sea or by land, and either way it would be a troublesome and a dangerous one for a convalescent in the rigor of the month of November. You could drink no mineral waters here in that season, nor are any mineral waters proper in your case, being all of them heating, except cellars. Then what would do you more harm than all the medicines could do you good? Would be the pestilential vapors of the House of Commons, in long and crowded days, of which there will probably be many this season, where your attendance, if here, will necessarily be required. I compare since Stephen's chapel upon those days to La Grotte de Caen. Whatever may be the fate of the war now, negotiations will certainly be stirring all the winter, and of those the northern ones you are sensible are not the least important. In these, if at Hamburg, you will probably have your share, and perhaps a meritorious one. Upon the whole, therefore, I would advise you to write a very civil letter to Lord Holderness, and tell them that though you cannot hope to be of any use to His Majesty's affairs anywhere yet, in the present unsettled state of the north, it is possible that unforeseen accidents may throw in your way to be of some little service, and that you would not willingly be out of the way of those accidents, but that you shall be most extremely obliged to His Lordship, if He will procure you His Majesty's gracious permission to return for a few months in the spring, when probably affairs will be more settled one way or another. When things tend nearer to a settlement, and that Germany, from the want of money or men, or both, breathes peace more than war, I shall solicit Burrish's commission for you, which is one of the most agreeable ones in His Majesty's gift, and I shall by no means despair of success. Now I have given you my opinion upon this affair, which does not make a difference of above three months, or four at most. I would not be understood to mean to force your own, if it should happen to be different from mine. But mine, I think, is more both for your health and your interest. However, do as you please. May you in this and everything else do for the best. So God bless you. Letter 233. Bath. October 18th, 1758. I received by the same post your two letters of the 29th past and of the third instant. The last tells me that you are perfectly recovered, and your resolution of going to Bremen in three or four days proves it. For surely you would not undertake that journey a second time and at this season of the year, without feeling your health solidly restored. However, in all events I hope you have taken a provision of good bark with you. I think your attention to her royal highness may be abuse to you here, and indeed all attentions to all sorts of people are always repaid in some way or other, though real obligations are not. For instance, Lord Titchfield, who has been with you at Hamburg, has written an account to the Duke and Duchess of Portland, who are here, of the civilities you showed him, with which he is much pleased, and they delighted. At this rate, if you do not take care, you will get the unmanly reputation of a well-bred man, and your countryman, John Trott, will disown you. I have received and tasted of your present, which is a tré grand vin, but more cordial to the stomach than pleasant to the palate. I keep it as a physique, only to take occasionally, in little disorders of my stomach, and in those cases I believe it is wholesomeer than stronger cordials. I have been now here a fortnight, and though I am rather better than when I came I am still far from well. My head is gittier than becomes ahead of my age, and my stomach has not recovered its retentive faculty. Leaning forward, particularly to write, does not at present agree with yours. My dear friend, your letter has quieted my alarms, for I find by it that you are as well recovered as you could be in so short a time. It is your business now to keep yourself well by scrupulously following Dr. Middleton's directions. He seems to be a rational and knowing man. Soap and steel are, unquestionably, the proper medicines for your case. But as they are alteratives, you must take them for a very long time, six months at least, and then drink cows to be at waters. I am fully persuaded that this was your original complaint in Carniola, which those ignorant physicians called in their jargon Arthritis Faga, and treated as such. But now that the true cause of your illness is discovered, I flatter myself that, with time and patience on your part, you will be radically cured, but I repeat it again it must be by a long and uninterrupted course of those alterative medicines above mentioned. They have no taste, but if they had a bad one I would not now suppose you such a child as to let the forwardness of your palate interfere in the least with the recovery or enjoyment of health. The latter deserves the utmost attention of the most rational man. The former is the only proper object of the care of a dainty, frivolous woman. The run of luck, which some time ago we were in, seems now to be turned against us. Oberg is completely routed. His Prussian majesty was surprised, which I am surprised at, and had rather the worst of it. I am in some pain for Prince Ferdinand as I take it for granted that the detachment from Marshal to Kantad's army, which enabled Prince Sobys to beat Oberg, will immediately return to the Grand Army, and then it will be infinitely superior. Nor do I see where Prince Ferdinand can take his winter quarters unless he retires to Hanover, and that I do not take to be at present the land of Canaan. Our second expedition to St. Malo I cannot call so much an unlucky as an ill-conducted one, as was also Abercrombie's affair in America. Mais il n'y a pas de petit pair qui revient souvent, and all those accidents put together make a considerable sum total. I have found so little good by these waters that I do not intend to stay here above a week longer, and then remove my crazy body to London, which is the most convenient place either to live or die in. I cannot expect active health anywhere. You may, with common care and prudence, affect it everywhere, and God grant that you may have it. Adieu. Letter 235, London, November 21st, 1758. My dear friend, you did well to think of Prince Ferdinand's ribbon, which I confess I did not, and I am glad to find you thinking so far beforehand. It would be a pretty commission, and I would ascendere me to procure it to you. The only competition I fear is that of General York, in case Prince Ferdinand should pass any time with his brother at the Hague, which is not unlikely, since he cannot go to Brunswick to his eldest brother, upon account of their simulated coral. I fear the peace is at an end with the king of Prussia, and he may say illicit. I am sure he may personally say plaudite. Warm work is expected this session of Parliament about continent and no continent. Some think Mr. Pitt too continent, others too little so, but a little time, as the newspapers most prudently and truly observe, will clear up these matters. The king has been ill, but his illness is terminated in a good fit of the gout, with which he is still confined. It was generally thought that he would have died, and for a very good reason, for the oldest lion in the tower, much about the king's age, died a fortnight ago. This extravagancy I can assure you was believed by many above pupil. So wild and capricious is the human mind. Take care of your health as much as you can, for to be or not to be is a question of much less importance in my mind, than to be or not to be well. Adjou. Letter 236, London, December 15th, 1758. My dear friend, it is a great while since I heard from you, but I hope that good, not ill health, has been the occasion of this silence. I will suppose you have been, or are still, at Brayman, and engrossed by your Hessian friends. Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick is most certainly to have the garter, and I think I have secured you the honor of putting it on. When I say secured, I mean it in the sense in which that word should always be understood at courts, and that is insecurely. I have a promise, but that is not, Caussion bourgeois. In all events do not mention it to any mortal, because there is always a degree of ridicule that attends a disappointment, though often very unjustly, if the expectation was reasonably grounded. However, it is certainly most prudent not to communicate prematurely one's hopes or one's fears. I cannot tell you when Prince Ferdinand will have it, though there are so many candidates for the other two vacant garters that I believe he will have his soon and by himself. The others must wait till a third, or rather a fourth, vacancy. Lord Rockingham and Lord Holderness are secure. Lord Temple pushes strongly, but I believe is not secure. This commission for dubbing a night, and so distinguish a one, will be a very agreeable and creditable one for you. Et il faut vu une acquité galement. In the days of ancient chivalry, people were very nice who they would be knighted by, and if I do not mistake, Francis I would only be knighted by the Chevalier qui est toi prue Chevalier et sans reproche, and no doubt but that it will be recorded dans les archives de la Maison de Brunswick that Prince Ferdinand received the honor of knighthood from your hands. The estimates for the expenses of the year 1759 are made up. I have seen them, and what do you think they amount to? No less than twelve millions three hundred thousand pounds, a most incredible sum, and yet already subscribed and even more offered. The unanimity in the House of Commons in voting such a sum, and such forces, both by sea and land, is not in the less astonishing. This is Mr. Pitt's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. The King of Prussia has nothing more to do this year, and the next he must begin where he is left off. I wish he would employ this winter in concluding a separate piece with the Elector of Saxony, which would give him more elbow room to act against France and the Queen of Hungary, and put an end at once to the proceedings of the Diet and the Army of the Empire, for then no estate of the Empire would be invaded by a co-estate, and France, the faithful and disinterested guarantee of the Treaty of Westphalia, would have no pretense to continue its armies there. I should think that his Polish Majesty and his Governor, Compte Brule, must be pretty weary of being fugitives in Poland where they are hated and of being ravaged in Saxony. This reverie of mine I hope will be tried, and I wish it may succeed. Good night, and God bless you. My dear friend, multi-ifelici, and I have done upon that subject one truth being fair upon the most lying day in the whole year. I have now before me your last letter of the 21st December, which I am glad to find is a bill of health. But, however, do not presume too much upon it, but obey and honor your physician, that thy days may be long in the land. Since my last I have heard nothing more concerning the ribbon, but I take it for granted it will be disposed of soon. By the way, upon reflection, I am not sure that anybody but a night can, according to form, be employed to make a night. I remember that Sir Clement Cotterill was sent to Holland to dub the late Prince of Orange, only because he was a night himself, and I know that the proxies of knights, who cannot attend their own installations, must always be knights. This did not occur to me before, and perhaps will not to the person who was to recommend you. I am sure I will not stir it, and I only mention it now, that you may be in all events prepared for the disappointment if it should happen. G is exceedingly flattered with your account that three thousand of his countrymen, all as little as himself, should be thought a sufficient guard upon three and twenty thousand of all the nations in Europe. Not that he thinks himself by any means a little man, for when he would describe a tall, handsome man, he raises himself up at least half an inch to represent him. The private news from Hamburg is that his Majesty's resident there is woundedly in love with Madame. If this be true, God sent him rather than her a good delivery. She must be entranée at this season, and therefore I think you should be so too. So draw upon me as soon as you please for one hundred pounds. Here is nothing new, except the unanimity with which the Parliament gives away a dozen of millions sterling, and the unanimity of the public is as great in approving it, which has stifled the usual political and polemical argumentations. Cardinal Bernice's disgrace is as sudden and hitherto as little understood as his elevation was. I have seen his poems printed at Paris, not by a friend, I daresay, and to judge by them I humbly conceive his eminency is a p. I will say nothing of that excellent headpiece that made him and unmade him in the same month, except O King, live forever. Good night to you, whoever you pass it with. Letter 238, London, February 2, 1759. My dear friend, I am now what I have very seldom been, two letters in your debt. The reason was that my head, like many other heads, has frequently taken a wrong turn, in which case writing is painful to me, and therefore cannot be very pleasant to my readers. I wish you would, while you have so good an opportunity as you have at Hamburg, to make yourself perfectly master of that dull but very useful knowledge, the course of exchange, and the causes of its almost perpetual variations, the value and relation of different coins, the specie, the banco, usances, agio, and a thousand other particulars. You may with ease learn, and you will be very glad when you have learned them, for in your business that sort of knowledge will often prove necessary. I hear nothing more of Prince Ferdinand's garter, that he will have one is very certain, but when, I believe, is very uncertain. All the other postulence wanting to be dubbed at the same time, which cannot be, as there is not ribboned enough for them. If the Russians move in time and in earnest, there will be an end of our hopes and of our armies in Germany. Three such millstones as Russia, France, and Austria must, sooner or later, in the course of the year, grind his prescient majesty down to a mere margrave of Brandenburg. But I have always some hopes of a change under a gunarchy, derived from the Greek word un, a woman, and means female government, where whim and humor commonly prevail, reason very seldom, and then only by a lucky mistake. I expect the incomparable fair one of Hamburg, that prodigy of beauty and paragon of good sense, who has enslaved your mind and inflamed your heart. If she is as well entranée as you say she shall, you will be soon out of her chains, for I have by long experience found women to be like Telfas's fear, if one end kills the other cures. There never was so quiet nor so silent a session of parliament as the present. Mr. Pitt declares only what he would have them do, and they do it. Nimené contradicente, Mr. Viner only accepted. Duchess Hamilton is to be married tomorrow to Colonel Campbell, the son of General Campbell, who will someday or other be Duke of Argyle, and have the estate. She refused the Duke of B for him. Here is a report, but I believe a very groundless one, that your old acquaintance, the fair Madame C, is run away from her husband, with a jeweler, that entranée is her, and is come over here. But I dare say it is some mistake, or perhaps a lie. Adieu, God bless you. In your last letter of the Seventh you accused me, most unjustly, of being in arrears in my correspondence. Whereas if our epistolieri accounts were fairly liquidated, I believe you would be brought in considerably debtor. I do not see how any of my letters to you can miscarry, unless your office packet miscarries too, for I always send them to the office. Moreover, I might have a justifiable excuse for writing to you seldomer than usual, for to be sure there never was a period of time, in the middle of a winter, and the parliament sitting, that supplied so little matter for a letter. Near twelve millions have been granted this year, not only Néminé contra dissente, but Néminé quickquid dissente. The proper officers bring in the estimates. It is taken for granted that they are necessary and frugal. The members go to dinner and leave Mr. West and Mr. Martin to do the rest. I presume you have seen the little poem of the country last by Somme Jenin's, for it was in the chronicle, as was also an answer to it from the monitor. They are neither of them bad performances. The first is the neatest, and the plan of the second has the most invention. I send you none of those pièces volants in my letters, because they are all printed in one or other of the newspapers, particularly in the chronicles. And I suppose that you and others will have all those papers among you at Hamburg, in which case it would be only putting you to the unnecessary expense of double postage. I find you are sanguine about the king of Prussia this year. I allow his army will be what you say, but what will be that vis-a-vis French, Austrians, imperialists, Swedes, and Russians, who must amount to more than double that number? Were the inequality less, I would allow for the king of Prussia's being so much, if say, Agmin, as pretty nearly to balance the account. In war, numbers are generally my omens, and I confess that in Germany they seem not happy ones this year. In America, I think, we are sure of success, and great success, but how we shall be able to strike a balance, as they call it, between good success there and ill success upon the continent, so as to come at apiece, is more than I can discover. Lady Chesterfield makes you her compliments and thanks you for your offer, but declines troubling you, being discouraged by the ill success of Madame Munchhausen's and Miss Chetwin's commissions, the former for beef and the latter for gloves, neither of which have yet been executed to the dissatisfaction of both. Adjou. Letter two hundred and forty. London, March sixteenth, seventeen fifty-nine. My dear friend, I have now your letter of the twentieth past lying before me, by which you despond, in my opinion, too soon of dubbing your prince, for he most certainly will have the garter, and he will as probably have it before the campaign opens as after. His campaign must, I doubt, at best be a defensive one, and he will show great skill in making it such, for according to my calculation his enemies will be at least double his number. Their troops, indeed, may perhaps be worse than his, but then their number will make up that defect, as it will enable them to undertake different operations at the same time. I cannot think that the king of Denmark will take a part in the present war, which he cannot do without great possible danger, and he is well paid by France for his neutrality, is safe, let what will turn out, and in the meantime carries on his commerce with great advantage and security, so that consideration will not retard your visit to your own country, whenever you have leave to return, and that your own arrangements will allow you. A short absence animates a tender passion, et l'en ne récu que pour mieux sauter, especially in the summer months, so that I would advise you to begin your journey in May, and continue your absence from the dear object of your vows till after the dog-days, when love is said to be unwholesome. We have been disappointed at Martinico. I wish we may not be so at Guadalupe, though we are landed there, for many difficulties must be got over before we can be in possession of the whole island. Apropos Dubois, you make use of two Spanish words very properly in your letter. Where I, you, I would learn the Spanish language, if there were a Spaniard at Hamburg who could teach me, and then you would be master of all the European languages that are useful, and in my mind it is very convenient, if not necessary, for a public man to understand them all, and not to be obliged to have recourse to an interpreter for all those papers that chance or business may throw in his way. I learned Spanish when I was older than you, convinced by experience that, in everything possible, it was better to trust to oneself than to any other body whatsoever. Interpreters, as well as relators, are often unfaithful, and still often are incorrect, puzzling and blundering. In short, let it be your maxim through life to know all you can yourself, and never to trust implicitly to the informations of others. This rule has been of infinite service to me in the course of my life. I am rather better than I was, which I owe not to my physicians, but to an ass and a cow who nourish me between them, very plentifully and wholesomely. In the morning the ass is my nurse, at night the cow, and I have just now brought a milch-goat, which is to graze and nurse me at Blackheath. I do not know what may come of this latter, and I am not without apprehensions that it may make a satter of me, but should I find that obscene disposition growing upon me, I will check it in time, for fear of endangering my life and character by rapes, and so we heartily bid you farewell. End of Section 192, read by Professor Heather and Bye. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 193 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter 241. London, March 30th, 1759. My dear friend, I do not like these frequent, however short, returns of your illness, for I doubt they imply either want of skill in your physician, or want of care in his patient. Rhubarb, soap, and Calcobiet medicines and waters are almost always specifics for obstructions of the liver. But then a very exact regimen is necessary, and that for a long continuance. Acids are good for you, but you do not love them, and sweet things are bad for you, and you do love them. There is another thing very bad for you, and I fear you love it too much. When I was in Holland I had a slow fever that hung upon me a great while. I consulted Borhev, who prescribed me what I suppose was proper, for it cured me. But he added, by way of a post-script to his prescription, Venice rarius collatur, which I observed, and perhaps that made the medicines more effectual. I doubt we shall be mutually disappointed in our hopes of seeing one another this spring, as I believe you will find, by a letter which you will receive at the same time with this, from Lord Holderness. But as Lord Holderness will not tell you all, I will between you and me supply that defect. I must do him the justice to say that he is acted in the most kind and friendly manner possible to us both. When the king read your letter, in which you desired leave to return, for the sake of drinking the Tunbridge waters, he said, if he wants steel waters, those of Piermont are better than Tunbridge, and he can have them very fresh at Hamburg. I would rather he had asked me to come last autumn, and had passed the winter here, for if he returns now I shall have nobody in those quarters to inform me of what passes, and yet it will be a very busy and important scene. Lord Holderness, who found that it would not be liked, resolved to push it no further, and replied he was very sure that when you knew his majesty had the least objection to your return at this time you would think of it no longer, and he owned that he, Lord Holderness, had given you encouragement for this application last year, then thinking and hoping that there would be little occasion for your presence at Hamburg this year. Lord Holderness will only tell you, in his letter, that, as he had some reason to believe his moving this matter would be disagreeable to the king, he resolved for your sake not to mention it. You must answer his letter upon that footing simply, and thank him for this mark of friendship, for he has really acted as your friend. I make no doubt of your having willing leave to return in autumn for the whole winter. In the meantime make the best of your seizure where you are. Drink the Pyrrhamont waters, and no wine but renish, which in your case is the only proper one for you. Next week Mr. Hart will send you his Gustavus Adolphus in two Cordos. It will contain many new particulars of the life of that real hero, as he has had abundant and authentic materials which have never yet appeared. It will, upon the whole, be a very curious and valuable history. Between you and me I could have wished that he had been more correct and elegant in his style. You will find it dedicated to one of your acquaintances, who was forced to prune the luxuriant phrases bestowed upon him, and yet has left enough of all conscious to satisfy a reasonable man. Hart has been very much out of order these last three or four months, but is not the less intent upon sowing his Lucerne, of which he had six crops last year to his infinite joy, and, as he says, profit. As a gardener I shall probably have as much joy, though not quite so much profit, by thirty or forty shillings, for there is the greatest promise of fruit this year at Blackheath that I ever saw in my life. Vertumnus and Pomona have been very propitious to me. As for Priapus, that tremendous garden-god, as I no longer invoke him, I cannot expect his protection from the birds and the thieves. Adju, I will conclude like a penant, levius fit patienta quid quad curigere est nefus. Letter 242, London, April 16th, 1759 My dear friend, with humble submission to you, I still say that if Prince Ferdinand can make a defensive campaign this year, he will have done a great deal, considering the great inequality of numbers. The little advantages of taking a regimen or two prisoners, or cutting another to pieces, are but trifling articles in the great account. They are only the pence, the pounds are yet to come, and I take it for granted that neither the French nor the court of Vienna will have la dementie of their main object, which is unquestionably handover. For that is the summa sumarum, and they will certainly take care to draw a force together for this purpose, too great for any that Prince Ferdinand has or can have to oppose them. In short, mark the end-aunt, je n'en guère mal. If France, Austria, the Empire, Russia, and Sweden are not at the long run too hard for the two electors of Hanover and Brandenburg, there must be some invisible power, some two-chiller deities, that miraculously interpose in favor of the latter. You encourage me to accept all the powers that goats, asses, and bulls can give me, by engaging for my not making an ill use of them. But I own I cannot help distrusting myself a little, or rather human nature, for it is an old and very true observation that there are misers of money, but none of the power, and the non-use of the one and the abuse of the other increase in proportion to their quantity. I am very sorry to tell you that Hart's Gustavus Adolphus does not take it all, and consequently sells very little. It is certainly informing and full of good matter, but it is as certain, too, that the style is excruable. Where the devil he picked it up I cannot conceive, for it is a bad style of a new and singular kind. It is full of Latin-isms, Gallic-isms, German-isms, and all-isms but Anglicisms, in some places pompous in others vulgar and low. Surely before the end of the world, people, and you in particular, will discover the manner in everything, is at least as important as the matter, and that the latter never can please without a good degree of elegance in the former. This holds true in everything in life. In writing, conversing, business, the help of the graces is absolutely necessary, and whoever vainly thinks himself above them will find he is mistaken when it will be too late to court them, for they will not come to strangers of an advanced age. There is in history lately come out of the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her son, no matter by whom, King James, written by one Robertson, a Scotchman, which for clearness, purity, and dignity of style, I will not scruple to compare with the best historian's extant, not accepting de Villa, Guicardini, and perhaps Libby. Its success has consequently been great, and a second edition is already published and brought up. I take it for granted that it is to be had or at least borrowed at Hamburg, or I would send it to you. I hope you drink the Pyrrhmont waters every morning. The health of the mind depends so much upon the health of the body that the latter deserves the utmost attention, independently of the senses. God send you a very great share of both. At you. End of Section 193. Read by Professor Heather Mby. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 194 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Chapter 243 London, April 27, 1759 My dear friend, I have received your two letters of the tenth and thirteenth by the last mail, and I will begin my answer to them by observing to you that a wise man, without being a stoic, considers in all misfortunes that befall him their best as well as their worst side, and everything has a better and a worse side. I have strictly observed that rule for many years, and have found by experience that some comfort is to be extracted, under most moral ills, by considering them in every light, instead of dwelling as people are too apt to do upon the gloomy side of the object. Thank God the disappointment that you so pathetically grown under is not a calamity which admits of no consolation. Let us simplify it and see what it amounts to. You are pleased with the expectation of coming here next month to see those who would have been pleased with seeing you. That from very natural causes cannot be, and you must pass the summer at Hamburg, and next winter at England, instead of passing this summer in England and next winter at Hamburg. Now estimating things fairly is not the change rather to your advantage, is not the summer more eligible, both for health and pleasure than the winter, in that northern frozen zone, and will not the winter in England supply you with more pleasures than the summer, in an empty capital, could have done? So far then it appears that you are rather a gainer by your misfortune. The tour, too, which you propose making to Lubeck, Altena, etc., will both amuse and inform you, for at your age one cannot see too many different places in people. Since at the age you are now of, I take it for granted that you will not see them superficially, as you did when you first went abroad. This whole matter then, summed up, amounts to no more than this, that you will be here next winter, instead of this summer. Do not think that all I have said is the consolation only of an old philosophical fellow, almost insensible of pleasure or pain, offered to a young fellow who has quick sensations of both. No, it is the rational philosophy taught me by experience and knowledge of the world, and which I have practised above 30 years. I have always made the best of the best, and never made bad of worse by fretting. This enabled me to go through the various scenes of life in which I have been an actor, with more pleasure and less pain than most people. You will say, perhaps, one cannot change one's nature, and that if a person is born of a very sensible, gloomy temper, and apt to see things in the worst light, they cannot help it, nor new make themselves. I will admit it to a certain degree, and but to a certain degree. For though we cannot totally change our nature, we may in a great measure correct it, by reflection and philosophy. And some philosophy is a very necessary companion in this world, where even to the most fortunate the chances are greatly against happiness. I am not old enough nor tenacious enough to pretend not to understand the main purport of your last letter, and to show you that I do, you may draw upon me for two hundred pounds, which I hope will more than clear you. Last night, Aqua memento ribis and arduous salvere mentum, being neither transported nor depressed by the accidents of life. Letter 244, Blackheath, May 16th, 1759. My dear friend, your secretary's last letter of the fourth, which I received yesterday, has quieted my fears a good deal, but has not entirely dissipated them. Your fever still continues, he says, though in a less ordinary. Is it a continued fever or an intermittent one? If the former, no wonder that you are weak, and that your headaches. If the latter, why has not the bark in substance and large doses been administered? For if it had, it must have stopped by this time. Next post, I hope, will set me quite at ease. Surely you have not been so regular as you ought, either in your medicines or in your general regimen, otherwise this fever would not have returned. For the doctor calls it, your fever returned, as if you have an exclusive patent for it. You have now had illnesses enough to know the value of health, and to make you implicitly follow the prescriptions of your physicians in medicine, and the rules of your own common sense and diet, in which I can assure you, from my own experience, that quantity is often worse than quality, and I would rather eat half a pound of bacon at a meal than two pounds of any of the most wholesome food. I have been settled here near a week, to my great satisfaction, say my place, and I know it, which is not given to everybody. Cut off from social life by my deafness, as well as other physical ills, and being at best but the ghost of my former self, I walk here in silence and solitude as becomes a ghost, with only this difference, that I walk by day, whereas you know to be sure that other ghosts only appear by night. My health, however, is better than it was last year, thanks to my almost total milk diet. This enables me to vary my solitary amusements, and alternately to scribble as well as read, which I could not do last year. Thus I saunter away the remainder, be it more or less, of an agitated and active life, now reduced, and I am not sure that I am loser by the change, to so quiet and serene one, that it may properly be called still life. The French whisper in confidence, in order that it may be the more known and the more credited, that they intend to invade us this year, in no less than three places. That is England, Scotland, and Ireland. Some of our great men, like the devils, believe in tremble. Others, and one little one whom I know, laugh at it, and in general it seems to be but a poor instead of a formidable scarecrow. While somebody was at the head of a moderate army, and wanted, I know why, to be at the head of a great one, intended invasions were made in article of political faith. And the belief of them was required, as in the church the belief of some absurdities, and even impossibilities, is required upon pain of heresy, excommunication, and consequently, damnation, if they tend to the power and interest of the heads of the church. But now that there is a general toleration, and that the best subjects, as well as the best Christians, may believe what their reasons find their consciousness suggest, it is generally and rationally supposed the French will threaten and not strike, since we are so well prepared, both by armies and fleets, to receive and, I may add, to destroy them. Adieu. God bless you. Blackheath, June 15th, 1759. My dear friend, your letter of the fifth which I received yesterday gave me great satisfaction, being all in your own hand, though it contains great and I fear just complaints of your ill state of health. You do very well to change the air, and I hope that the change will do well by you. I would therefore have you right after the 20th of August to Lord Holdeness, to beg of him to obtain his majesty's leave for you to return to England for two or three months, upon account of your health. Two or three months is an indefinite time, which may afterward be insensibly stretched to what length one pleases. Leave that to me. In the meantime you may be taking your measures with the best economy. The day before yesterday an express arrived from Guadeloupe which brought an account of our being in possession of the whole island, and I make no matter of doubt but that, in about two months, we shall have as good news from Crown Point, Quebec, et cetera. Our fares in Germany I fear will not be equally prosperous, for I have very little hopes for the King of Prussia or Prince Ferdinand. God bless you. Letter 246, Blackheath, June 25th, 1759. My dear friend, the last two mails have brought me no letter from you or your secretary. I will take this as a sign that you are better, but, however, if you thought that I cared to know, you should have cared to have written. Here the weather has been very fine for a fortnight together, a longer term than in this climate we are used to hold fine weather by. I hope it is so too at Hamburg, or at least at the villa to which you are gone. But pray do not let it be your villa viciosa, as those retirements are often called, and too often prove, though, by the way, the original name was villa viciosa, and by wags miscalled viciosa. I have a most gloomy prospect of affairs in Germany. The French are already in possession of castle, and of the learned part of Hanover, that is Scottingen, where I presume they will not stop pour l'amour des bellets, but rather go on to the capital and study them upon the coin. My old acquaintance, Monsieur Richelieu, made a great progress there in metallic learning and inscriptions. If Prince Ferdinand ventures a battle to prevent it, I dread the consequences. The odds are too great against him. The king of Prussia is still in a worse situation, for he has the hydra to encounter, and though he may cut off a head or two, there will still be enough left to devour him at last. I have, as you know, long foretold the now approaching catastrophe, but I was Cassandra. Your affairs in the New World have a much more pleasing aspect. Guadalupe is a great acquisition, and Quebec, which I make no doubt of, will still be greater. But must all these advantages, purchased at the price of so much English blood and treasure, be at last sacrificed as a peace offering? God knows what consequences such a measure may produce. The germ of discontent is already great upon the bare suspicion of the case, but should it be realized it will grow to a harvest of disaffection. You are now to be sure taking the previous necessary measures for your return here in the autumn, and I think you may disband your whole family, accepting your secretary, your butler, who takes care of your plate, wine, etc., one or at most two maid-servants, and your valet de chambre and one footman, whom you will bring over with you. But give no mortal, either there or here, reason to think that you are not to return to Hamburg again. If you are asked about it, say, like Lockhart, that you are le servitude des événements, for your present appointments will do you no hurt there till you have some better destination. At that season of the year I believe it will be better for you to come by sea than by land, but that you will be best able to judge of from the then circumstances of your part in the world. Your old friend Stevens is dead of the consumption that has long been undermining him. God bless you and send you health. CHESTORFIELD'S LETTERS to his son Red for LibriVox.org into the public domain. CHESTORFIELD'S LETTERS to his son Red for LibriVox.org into the public domain. CHESTORFIELD'S LETTERS to his son Red in the public domain. CHESTORFIELD'S LETTERS to his son Red in the public domain. with him as you used to do before. For in the intercourse of the world it is often necessary to seem ignorant of what one knows, and to have forgotten what one remembers. I have just now finished Coleman's play and like it very well. It is well conducted, and the characters are well preserved. I own I expected from the author more dialogue wit. But as I know that he is a most scrupulous classic, I believe he did not dare to put in half so much wit as he could have done, because Terrence had not a single grain, and it would have been Creman, Lese, Antiquitatus. God bless you. Letter 248. Bath, November 21st, 1761. My dear friend, I have this moment received your letter of the nineteenth. If I find any alterations by drinking these waters, now six days, it is rather for the better. But in six days more I think I shall find with more certainty what humor they are in with me. If kind I will profit of, but not abuse their kindness. All things have their bounds. Quo s ultra, sottrave, necquit, consistere rectum, and I will endeavour to nick that point. The Queen's jointure is larger than, from some reasons, I expected it would be, though not greater than the last precedent authorised. The case of the late Lord Wilmington was I fancy remembered. I have now good reason to believe that Spain will declare war to us, that is, that it will very soon, if it has not already, avowedly assist France, in case the war continues. This will be a great triumph to Mr. Pitt, and fully justify his plan of beginning with Spain first, and having the first blow, which is often half the battle. Here is a great deal of company, and what is commonly called good company, that is, great quality. I trouble them very little except at the pump, where my business calls me, for what is company to a deaf man, or deaf man to company? Lady Brown, whom I have seen, and who, by the way, has got the gout in her eye, inquired very tenderly after you. And so I elegantly rest yours till death. Chapter 249, Bath December 6th, 1761 My dear friend, I have been in your debt some time, which you know I am not very apt to be, but it was really for want of specie to pay. The present state of my invention does not enable me to coin, and you would have had as little pleasure in reading as I should have in writing the colonie of this place. Besides that, I am very little mingled in them. I do not know whether I shall be able to follow your advice and cut a winner, for at present I have neither one nor lost a single shilling. I will play on this week only, and if I have a good run I will carry it off with me. If a bad one, the loss can hardly amount to anything considerable in seven days, for I hope to see you in town to-morrow seven night. I had a dismal letter from Hart last week. He tells me that he is at nurse with a sister in Berkshire, that he has got a confirmed jaundice besides twenty other distempers. The true cause of these complaints I take to be the same that so greatly disordered, and had nearly destroyed the most august house of Austria about one hundred and thirty years ago. I mean Gustavus Adolphus, who neither answered his expectations in point of profit nor reputation, and that merely by his own fault, in not writing it in the vulgar tongue, for as to facts I will maintain that it is one of the best histories extant. Au revoir, as Sir Fopping says, and God bless you. LETTER 252 My dear friend, I arrived here as I proposed last Sunday, but as ill as I feared I should be when I saw you, head, stomach, and limbs all out of order. I have yet seen nobody but Villette, who has settled here for good, as it is called. What consequences has the Duke of Devonshire's resignation had? He has considerable connections and relations, but whether any of them are resigned enough to resign with him is another matter. There will be, to be sure, as many and as absurd reports, as there are in the law books. I do not desire to know either, but inform me of what facts come to your knowledge, but of such reports only, as you believe, are grounded. And so, God bless you. And believe that your preliminaries are very near the mark. And upon that supposition I think we have made a tolerable good bargain with Spain, at least full as good as I expected, and almost as good as I wished, though I do not believe that we have got all Florida. But if we have St. Augustine, I suppose that, by the figure of Par Prototo, will be called all Florida. We have by no means made so good a bargain with France, for in truth, what do we get by it, except Canada, with the very proper boundary of the river Mississippi, and that is all. As for the restrictions upon the French fishery in Newfoundland, they are all very well, per la Prédica, and for the commissary whom we shall employ, for he will have a good salary from hence to see that those restrictions are complied with, and the French will double that salary, that he may allow them all to be broken through. It is plain to me that the French fishery will be exactly what it was before the war. The three leeward islands, which the French yield to us, are not altogether worth half so much as that of St. Lucia, which we give up to them. Senegal is not worth one quarter of gore. The restrictions of the French and the East Indies are as absurd and impracticable as those of Newfoundland, and you will live to see the French trade to the East Indies, just as they did before the war. But after all I have said the articles are as good as I expected with France, when I considered that no one single person who carried on this negotiation, on our parts, was ever concerned or consulted in any negotiation before. Upon the whole then the acquisition of Canada has cost us four score million sterling. I am convinced we might have kept Guadalupe if our negotiators had known how to have gone about it. His most faithful Majesty of Portugal is the best off of anybody in this transaction, for he saves his kingdom by it, and has not laid out one moidur in defense of it. Spain thank God in some measure, paye-le-pod-casis. For besides St. Augustine, logwood, etc., it has lost at least four million sterling in money, ships, etc. Hart is here, who tells me he has been at this place these three years, accepting some few excursions to his sister. He looks ill and laments that he has frequent fits of the yellow jaundice. He complains of his not having heard from you these four years. You should write to him. These waters have done me a great deal of good, though I drink but two-thirds of a pint in the whole day, which is less than the soberest of my countrymen drink of claret at every meal. I should naturally think, as you do, that this session will be a stormy one. That is, if Mr. Pitt takes an active part. But if he is pleased, as the ministers say, there is no other aeolus to blow a storm. The dukes of Cumberland, Newcastle, and Devonshire have no better troops to attack than with the militia. But Pitt alone is ipsae-agmon. God bless you. Letter 252. Bath, November 27th, 1762. My dear friend, I received your letter this morning and returned you the ball à la volie. The king's speech is a very prudent one, and as I suppose that the address and answer to it were, as usual, in almost the same words, my lord mayer might very well call them innocent. As his majesty expiates so much upon the great achievements of the war, I cannot help hoping that, when the preliminaries shall be laid before Parliament in due time, which I suppose means, after the respective ratifications of all the contracting parties, that some untalked of and unexpected advantage will break out in our treaty with France. Saint Lucia, at least. I see in the newspapers an article which I by no means like, in our treaty with Spain, which is that we shall be at liberty to cut logwood in the Bay of Campeche, but by paying for it. Who does not see that this condition may and probably will amount to a prohibition by the price which the Spaniards may set it at? It was our undoubted right and confirmed to us by former treaties before the war to cut logwood gratis. But this new stipulation, if true, gives us a privilege something like a reprieve to a criminal, with a non-abstante to be hanged. I now drink so little water that it can neither do me good nor hurt, but as I bathe but twice a week, that operation which does my rheumatic carcass good, will keep me here some time longer than you had allowed. Hart is going to publish a new edition of his Gustavus in Octavo, which he tells me he has altered, and which I could tell him he should translate into English, or it will not sell better than the former, for while the world endures, style and manner will be regarded, at least as much as matter. And so, diem vous aye, dans la Sainte Garde. Letter 253. Bath, December 13th, 1762. My dear friend, I received your letter this morning with the enclosed preliminaries, which we have had here these three days, and I return them since you intend to keep them, which is more than I believe the French will. I am very glad to find that the French are to restore all the conquests they made upon us in the East Indies during this war, and I cannot doubt but that they will likewise restore to us all the cod that they shall take within less than three leagues of our coasts in North America, a distance easily measured especially at sea, according to the spirit, though not the letter of the treaty. I am informed that the strong opposition to the peace will be in the House of Lords, though I cannot well conceive it, nor can I make out above six or seven who will be against it upon a division, unless, which I cannot suppose, some of the bishops should vote on the side of their maker. God bless you. End of Section 197. Read by Professor Heather Ambi. For more free audio books or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 198 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter 254. Bath, December 13th, 1762. My dear friend, yesterday I received your letter which gave me a very clear account of the debate in your house. It is impossible for a human creature to speak well for three hours and a half. I question if even Belial, who according to Milton was the orator of the fallen angels, ever spoke so long at a time. There must have been a trick in Charles Townsend speaking for the preliminaries, for he is infinitely above having an opinion. Lord Egremont must be ill or have thoughts of going into some other place, perhaps into Lord Granville's, who they say is dying. When he dies, the ableist head in England dies too, take it for all and all. I shall be in town barring accidents this day seven night, by dinnertime, when I have ordered a haricot, to which you will be very welcome about four o'clock. En attendant, Dieu vous aide dans sa santé gâtée. Letter 255. Blackheath, June 14th, 1763. My dear friend, I received by the last mail your letter of the fourth from the Hague, so far so good. You arrived Seneca at the Hague for our ambassador's entertainment. I find he has been very civil to you. You are in the right to stop for two or three days at Hanau, and make your court to the lady of that place. Her royal highness, Princess Mary of England, Laungriving of Hessem. Your Excellency makes a figure already in the newspapers, and let them and others, Excellency, you as much as they please, but pray suffer not your own servants to do it. Nothing new of any kind has happened here since you went, so I will wish you a good night, and hope God will bless you. Letter 256. Blackheath, July 14th, 1763. My dear friend, yesterday I received your letter from Rattisbone, where I am glad that you are arrived safe. You are, I find, overhead in ears engaged in ceremony and etiquette. You must not yield in anything essential where your public character may suffer, but I advise you at the same time to distinguish carefully what may and what may not affect it, and to despise some German minutiae, such as one step lower or higher upon the stairs, a bow more or less, and such sort of trifles. By what I see in Cressenor's letter to you, the cheapness of wine compensates the quantity, as the cheapness of servants compensates the number that you must make use of. Write to your mother often, if it be but three words, to prove your existence, for when she does not hear from you, she knows to a demonstration that you are dead if not buried. The enclosed is a letter of the utmost consequence, which I was desired forward with care and speed to the most serene Louis. My head is not well today, so God bless you. Letter 257, Blackheath, August 1st, 1763. My dear friend, I hope that by this time you are pretty well settled at Rattisbone, at least as to the important points of the ceremonial, so that you may know to precision to whom you must give and from whom you must require the Senn Exalons. Those formalities are, no doubt, ridiculous enough in themselves, but yet they are necessary for manners and sometimes for business, and both would suffer by laying them quite aside. I have lately had an attack of a new complaint, which I have long suspected that I had in my body in Acto Primo, as the pedants call it, but which I never felt in Acto Secundo till last week, and that is a fit of the stone or gravel. It was, thank God, but a slight one, but it was dans toutes les formes, for it was preceded by a pain in my loins, which I at first took for some remains of my rheumatism, but was soon convinced of my mistake, by making water much blacker than coffee, with a prodigious sediment of gravel. I am now perfectly easy again and have no more indications of this complaint. God keep you from that and deafness. Other complaints are the common and almost the inevitable lot of human nature, but admit of some mitigation. God bless you. LETTER 258. BLACKHEATH, AUGUST 22, 1763. My dear friend, you will by this post hear from others that Lord Egremont died two days ago of an apoplexy, which from his figure and the constant plethora he lived in, was reasonably to be expected. You will ask me who is to be secretary in his room, to which I answer, that I do not know. I should guess, Lord Sandwich, to be succeeded in the admiralty by Charles Townsend, unless the Duke of Bedford, who seems to have taken to himself the department of Europe, should have a mind to it. This event may perhaps produce others, but till this happened everything was in a state of inaction, and absolutely nothing was done. Before the next session this chaos must necessarily take some form, either by a new jumble of its own atoms, or by mixing them with the more efficient ones of the opposition. I see by the newspapers, as well as by your letter, that the difficulties still exist about your ceremonial at Rattusbone. Should they, from pride and folly, prove insuperable, and obstruct your real business, there is one expedient which may perhaps remove difficulties, and which I have often known practiced, but which I believe our people know here nothing of. It is to have the character of minister only in your ostensible title, and that of Envoy Extraordinary in your pocket, to produce occasionally, especially if you should be sent to any of the electors in your neighborhood, or else in any transactions that you may have, in which your title of Envoy Extraordinary may create great difficulties, to have a reversal given you, declaring that the temporary suspension of that character ne donnerait pas le moindre tende, ni à vos droits, ni à vos pretensions. As for the rest, divert yourself as well as you can, and eat and drink as little as you can. And so, God bless you. Letter 259. Blackheath, September 1st, 1763. My dear friend. Great news! The king sent for Mr. Pitt last Saturday, and the conference lasted a full hour. On the Monday following another conference, which lasted much longer, and yesterday a third, longer than either. You take for granted that the treaty was concluded and ratified. No such matter, for this last conference broke it entirely off, and Mr. Pitt and Lord Temple went yesterday evening to their respective country houses. Would you know what it broke off upon? You must ask the newsmongers and the coffee-houses, who I daresay know it all very minutely. But I, who am not apt to know anything that I do not know, honestly and humbly confess, that I cannot tell you. Probably one party asked too much, and the other would grant too little. However, the king's dignity was not, in my mind, much consulted by their making him sole plenipotentary of a treaty, which they were not in all events determined to conclude. It ought surely to have been begun by some inferior agent, and his majesty should only have appeared in rejecting or ratifying it. Louis XIV never sat down before a town in person that was not sure to be taken. However, ce qui est de faire n'est pas perdu, for this matter must be taken up again and concluded before the meeting of the parliament, and probably upon more disadvantageous terms to the present ministers, who have tacitly admitted by this negotiation what their enemies have loudly proclaimed that they are not able to carry on affairs. So much, du re politica. I have at last done the best office that can be done to most married people, that is, I have fixed the separation between my brother and his wife, and the definitive treaty of peace will be proclaimed in about a fortnight, for the only solid and lasting peace between a man and his wife is doubtless as separation. God bless you. Letter 260 Blackheath, September 30th, 1763 My dear friend, you will have known long before this from the office that the departments are not cast as you wished, for Lord Halifax, as senior, had of course his choice and chose the southern upon account of the colonies. The ministry, such as it is, is now settled on a tendant mieux, but in my opinion cannot, as they are, meet the parliament. The only, and all the efficient people they have, are in the House of Lords, for since Mr. Pitt has firmly engaged Charles Townsend to him, there is not a man of the courtside in the House of Commons who has either abilities or words enough to call a coach. Lord B is certainly playing un dessous de cas, and I suspect that it is with Mr. Pitt, but what that dessous is, I do not know, though all the coffee houses do most exactly. The present inaction, I believe, gives you leisure enough for ennui, but it gives you time enough too for better things. I mean reading useful books, and what is still more useful, conversing with yourself some part of every day. Lord Shapsbury recommends self-conversation to all authors, and I would recommend it to all men. They would be the better for it. Some people have not time, and fewer have inclination to enter into that conversation. Nay very many dread it, and fly to the most trifling dissipations in order to avoid it. But if a man would allot half an hour every night for this self-conversation, and recapitulate with himself whatever he has done, right or wrong, in the course of the day, he would be both the better and the wiser for it. My deafness gives me more than a sufficient time for self-conversation, and I have found great advantages from it. My brother and Lady Stanhope are at last finally parted. I was the negotiator between them, and had so much trouble in it that I would much rather negotiate the most difficult point of the juice-publicum sacrum romani imperii, with the whole diet of ratisbone, than negotiate any point with any woman. If my brother had had some of those self-conversations which I recommend, he would not, I believe, at past sixty, with a crazy, battered constitution, and deaf into the bargain, have married a young girl, just turned of twenty, full of health and consequently of desires. But who takes warning by the fate of others? This perhaps proceeds from a negligence of self-conversation. God bless you. CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS TO HIS SON redfordlybrevox.org into the PUBLIC DOMAIN LETTER 261 BLACK HEATH, OCTOBER 17TH, 1763 My dear friend, the last mail brought me your letter of the second instant, as the former had brought me that of the twenty-fifth past. I did suppose that you would be sent over for the first day of the session, as I never knew a stricter muster and no furloughs allowed. I am very sorry for it, for the reasons you hint at. But, however, you did very prudently in doing de bon gras, what you could not help doing, and let that be your rule in everything for the rest of your life. Avoid disagreeable things as much as by dexterity you can, but when they are unavoidable, do them with seeming willingness and alacrity. Though this journey is ill-timed for you in many respects, yet, in point of finances, you will be a gainer by it upon the whole. For, depend upon it, they will keep you there till the very last day of the session, and I suppose you have sold your horses and dismissed some of your servants. Though they seem to apprehend the first day of the session so much, in my opinion their danger will be much greater in the course of it. When you are at Paris, you will, of course, wait upon Lord Hartford, and desire him to present you to the king. At the same time make my compliments to him and thank him for the very obliging message he left at my house in town, and tell him that had I received it in time from thence, I would have come to town on purpose to have returned it in person. If there are any new little books at Paris, pray bring them me. I have already Voltaire Celle dans le Bain, his Doit du Seigneur, and Olympie. Do not forget to call once at Madame Monconcils, and as often as you please at Madame Dupin. Au revoir. Letter 262. Bath November 24th, 1763. My dear friend, I arrived here as you supposed in your letter last Sunday, but after the worst day's journey I ever had in my life, it snowed and froze that whole morning, and in the evening it rained and thawed, which made the roads so slippery that I was six hours coming post from the devises, which is but eighteen miles from hence. So that, but for the name of coming post, I might as well have walked on foot. I have not yet quite got over my last violent attack, and am weak and flimsy. I have now drank the waters but three days, so that without a miracle I cannot yet expect much alteration, and I do not in the least expect a miracle. If they proved les yeux de juvance, to me, that would be a miracle indeed, but as the late Pope Lambertini said, for a noeil glimiracoli sono passati ghirtun pezzo. I have seen heart who inquired much after you. He is dejected and dispirited, and thinks himself much worse than he is, though he really has a tendency to the jaundice. I have yet seen nobody else, nor do I know who is here to be seen, for I have not yet exhibited myself to public view, except at the pump, which at the time I go to it is the most private place in Bath. After all the fears and hopes occasioned severally by the meeting of the parliament, in my opinion it will prove a very easy session. Mr Wilkes is universally given up, and if the ministers themselves do not wantonly raise difficulties, I think they will meet with none. A majority of two hundred is a great anodyne. Adju, God bless you. Letter 263. Bath, September 3rd, 1763. My dear friend, last post brought me your letter of the 29th past. I suppose C.T. let off his speech upon the princess's portion, chiefly to show that he was of the opposition. For otherwise the point was not debatable, unless as to the quantum against which something might be said. For the late Princess of Orange, who was the eldest daughter of a king, had no more, and her two sisters but half if I am not mistaken. It is a great mercy that Mr. Wilkes, the intrepid defender of our rights and liberties, is out of danger, and may live to fight and write again in support of them. And it is no less a mercy that God hath raised up the Earl of S. to vindicate and promote true religion and morality. These two blessings will justly make an epic in the annals of this country. I have delivered your message to Hart, who waits with impatience for your letter. He is very happy now in having free access to all Lord Craven's papers, which, he says, give him great lights into the bellum tricinel, the old Lord Craven having been the professed and valorious knight errant, and perhaps something more, to the Queen of Bohemia. At least, like Sir Peter Pryde, he had the honour of spending a great part of his estate in her royal cause. I am by no means right yet. I am very weak and flimsy still. But the doctor assures me that strength and spirits will return. If they do, lucro aponam, I will make the best of them, and if they do not, I will not make their want still worse by grieving and regretting them. I have lived long enough, and observed enough, to estimate most things that they are intrinsic, and not their imaginary value, and at seventy I find nothing much worth either desiring or fearing. But these reflections, which suit with seventy, would be greatly premature at two and thirty. So make the best of your time. Enjoy the present hour, but memoire ultime. God bless you. I see very few people, and in the literal sense of the word I hear nothing. Mr. L. and Mr. C. I hold to be two very ingenious men, and your image of the two men ruined, one by losing his lawsuit and the other by carrying it, is a very just one. To be sure they felt in themselves uncommon talents for business and speaking, which were to reimburse them. Heart has a great poetical work to publish before it be long. He has shown me some parts of it. He had entitled it emblems, but I persuaded him to alter that name for two reasons. The first was, because they were not emblems but fables. The second was that, if they had been emblems, quarrels had degraded and vilified that name to such a degree, that it is impossible to make use of it after him. So they are to be called fables, though moral tales would, in my mind, be the properest name. If you ask me what I think of those I have seen, I must say that S. Pluribonna, Quedem Moriacra, and Quedem. Your report of future changes I cannot think is wholly groundless, for it still runs strongly in my head, that the mind we talked of will be sprung at or before the end of the session. I have got a little more strength, but not quite the strength of Hercules, so that I will not undertake, like Kim, fifty deflaurations in one night, for I really believe that I could not compass them. So good night, and God bless you. LETTER 265. BATH, DECEMBER 24TH, 1763 Dear friend, I confess I was a good deal surprised at your pressing me so strongly to influence Parson Rosenhagen, when you well know the resolution I had made several years ago, and which I have scrupulously observed ever since, not to concern myself, directly or indirectly, in any party political contest whatsoever. Let parties go to loggerheads as much and as long as they please. I will neither endeavour to part them, nor take the part of either, for I know them all too well. But you say that Lord Sandwich has been remarkably civil and kind to you. I am very glad of it, and he can by no means impute to you my obscenacy, folly, or philosophy, call it what you please. You may with great truth assure him that you did all you could to obey his commands. I am sorry to find that you are out of order, but I hope it is only a cold. Should it be anything more, pray consult Dr. Matti, who did you so much good in your last illness, when the great medicinal matidores did you rather harm. I have found a M. Diaphorus here, Dr. Moisey, who has really done me a good deal of good, and I am sure I wanted it a great deal when I came here first. I have recovered some strength, and a little more will give me as much as I can make use of. Lady Brown, whom I saw yesterday, makes you many compliments, and I wish you a merry Christmas and a good night. Adjou. Letter 266. Bath December 31st, 1763. My dear friend. Grevenkopp wrote me word by the last post that you were laid up with the gout, but I much question it, that is, whether it is the gout or not. Your last illness, when you went abroad, was pronounced the gout by the skillful, and proved at last a mere rheumatism. Take care that the same mistake is not made this year, and that by giving you strong and hot medicines to throw out the gout, they do not inflame the rheumatism if it be one. Mr. Wilkes has imitated some of the great men of antiquity by going into voluntary exile. It was his only way of defeating both his creditors and his prosecutors. Whatever his friends, if he has any, give out of his returning soon. I will answer for it, but it will be a long time before that soon comes. I have been much out of order these four days of a violent cold, which I do not know how I got, and which obliged me to suspend drinking the waters. But it is now so much better that I propose resuming them for this week, and paying my court to you in town on Monday or Tuesday seven night. But this is sub-spirata only. I have received your letter of the third from Prague, but I never received that which you mentioned from Rattusbone. This made me think you in such rapid motion that I did not know where to take aim. I suppose that you are arrived, though not yet settled, at Dresden. Your audiences and formalities are to be sure over, and that is a great ease of mind to you. I have no political events to acquaint you with. Summer is not the season for them. They ripen only in winter. Great ones are expected immediately before the meeting of parliament, but that, you know, is always the language of fears and hopes. However, I rather believe that there will be something patched up between the ends and the outs. The whole subject of conversation, at present, is the death and will of Lord Bath. He has left above twelve hundred thousand pounds in land and money, four hundred thousand pounds in cash, stocks, and mortgages. His own estate and land was improved to fifteen thousand pounds a year, and the Bradford estate, which he purchased, is as much, both which, at only five and twenty years' purchase, amount to eight hundred thousand pounds, and all this he has left to his brother General Pultney, and in his own disposal, though he never loved him. The legacies he has given are trifling, for in truth he cared for nobody. The words give and bequeath were too shocking for him to repeat, and so he left all in one word to his brother. The public, which was long the dupe of his simulation and dissimulation, begins to explain upon him, and draws such a picture of him as I gave you long ago. Your late secretary has been with me three or four times. He wants something or other, and it seems all one to him what, whether civil or military, in plain English he wants bread. He has knocked at the doors of some of the ministers but to no purpose. I wish with all my heart that I could help him. I told him fairly that I could not, but advised him to find some channel to Lord Be, which though a Scotsman he told me he could not. He brought a packet of letters from the office to you which I made him seal up and keep for you, as I suppose it makes up the series of your Ratispone letters. As for me, I am just what I was when you left me, that is, nobody. Old age steals upon me insensibly. I grow weak and decrepit, but do not suffer, and so I am content. Forbes brought me four books of yours, two of which were Bielefeld's letters, in which to my knowledge there are many notorious lies. Make my compliments to Comte Ein Seidel, whom I love and honor much, and so good night to sign exhalance. Now our correspondence may be more regular, and I expect a letter from you every fortnight. I will be regular on my part, but right often or to your mother, if it be but three lines. End of Section 201, read by Professor Heather Mby. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 202 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter 268, Blackheath, July 27, 1764 My dear friend, I received two days ago your letter of the Eleventh from Dresden, where I am very glad that you arrived safely at last. The prices of the necessaries of life are monstrous there, and I do not conceive how the poor natives subsist at all, after having been so long and so often plundered by their own, as well as by other sovereigns. As for procuring you either the title or the appointments of plenipotentary, I could assume procure them from the Turkish as from the English ministry, and in truth I believe they have it not to give. Now to come to your civil list, if one may compare small things with great. I think I have found a better refreshment for it than you propose. For to-morrow I shall send to your cashier Mr. Larpent, five hundred pounds at once, for your use, which I presume is better than by quarterly payments, and I am very apt to think that next Midsummer Day he will have the same sum and for the same use consigned to him. It is reported here, and I believe not without some foundation, that the Queen of Hungary has acceded to the family compact between France and Spain. If so, I am sure it behooves us to form in time a counter-alliance of at least equal strength, which I could easily point out, but which I fear is not thought of here. The rage of marrying is very prevalent, so that there will be probably a great crop of cuckolds next winter, who are at present only cuckoos in nob. It will contribute to population, and so far as must be allowed to be a public benefit. Lord G., Mr. B. and Mr. D. are, in this respect very meritorious, for they have all married handsome women, without one shilling fortune. Lord must indeed take some pains to arrive at that dignity, but I dare say he will bring it about, and by the help of some young scotch or Irish officer. Good night, and God bless you. Letter 269, Blackheath, September 3, 1764 Dear friend, I have received your letter of the thirteenth past. I see that your complete arrangement approaches, and you need not be in a hurry to give entertainments, since so few others do. Compt Fleming is the man in the world the best calculated to retrieve the sacks and finances, which have been all this century squandered and lavished with the most absurd profusion. He has, certainly, abilities, and I believe integrity. I dare answer for him that the gentleness and flexibility of his temper will not prevail with him to yield to the importunities of craving and petulant applications. I see in him another silly, and therefore I wish he were at the head of our finances. France and Spain both insult us, and we take it too tamely, for this is, in my opinion, the time for us to talk high to them. France, I am persuaded, will not quarrel with us till it has got a navy at least equal to ours, which cannot be these three or four years at soonest, and then indeed I believe we shall hear of something or other. Therefore, this is the moment for us to speak loud, and we shall be feared if we do not show that we fear. Here is no domestic news of changes and chances in the political world, which, like oysters, are only in season in the armaments, when the Parliament sits. I think there will be some then, but of what kind, God knows. I have received a book for you and one for myself from heart. It is upon agriculture, and will surprise you as I confess it did me. This work is not only in English, but good and elegant English. He has even scattered graces upon his subject, and in prose, has come very near Virgil's georgix in verse. I have written to him to congratulate his happy transformation. As soon as I can find an opportunity, I will send you your copy. You, though no agri-cola, will read it with pleasure. I know Mackenzie whom you mention. C'est une dél'île s'est cavée. Make mine and Lady Chesterfield's compliments to compte s'flemming. And so, je vous aille une saison, God. Letter 270. Blackheath, September 14, 1764. My dear friend. Yesterday I received your letter of the thirtieth past, by which I find that you had not then got mine, which I sent you the day after I received your former. You have had no great loss of it, for, as I told you in my last, this inactive season of the year supplies no materials for a letter. The winter may, and probably will, produce an abundant crop, but of what grain I neither know, guess, nor care. I take it for granted that Lord be, sur naguerre encorre, but by the assistance of what bladders or corkways God only knows. The epauletic fits of the Duke of Devonshire, for which he has gone to exl'chappelle, and the advanced age of the Duke of Newcastle, seem to facilitate an accommodation if Mr. Pitt and Lord Butte are inclined to it. You ask me what I think of the death of Port Iwan, and of the person who ordered it. You may remember that I often said she would murder or marry him, or probably both. She has chosen the safest alternative, and has now completed her character of femme-thort, above scruples and hesitation. If Machiavelle were alive she would probably be his heroine, as César Borgio was his hero. Women are all so far Machiavellians that they are never either good or bad by halves, their passions are too strong, and their reason too weak to do anything with moderation. She will perhaps meet, before it is long, with some Scythian as free from prejudices as herself. If there is one Oliver Cromwell in the three regiments of guards, he will probably, for the sake of his dear country, depose and murder her, for that is one and the same thing in Russia. You seem now to have settled and bien nipp at Dresden. Four sedentary footmen and one running one font équipage leste. The Germans will give you sign excellence, and the French ones, if you have any, monseigneur. My own health varies as usual, but never deviates into good. God bless you and send you better. End of section 202, read by Professor Heather and Bye. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 203 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son, read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter 271, Blackheath, October 4, 1764. My dear friend, I have now your last letter of the sixteenth past lying before me, and I gave your enclose to Grevenkopp, which has put him into a violent bustle to execute your commissions, as well and as cheap as possible. I refer him to his own letter. He tells you true as to contest Kussel's diamonds, which certainly nobody will buy here, unsight unseen, as they call it, so many minutiae concerning to increase or lessen the value of a diamond. Your Chester cheese, your Burton ale and beer I charge myself with, and they shall be sent you as soon as possible. Upon this occasion I will give you a piece of advice, which by experience I know to be useful. In all commissions, whether for men or women, pointe de la galentairie, bring them in your account, and be paid to the uttermost farthing. But if you would show them une galentairie, let your present be of something that is not in your commission, otherwise you will be the commissionaire banal of all the women of Saxony. Apropos, who is your contestant Kussel? Is she daughter or granddaughter of the famous madame de Kussel in King Augustus's time? Is she young or old, ugly or handsome? I do not wonder that people are wonderfully surprised at our tameness and forbearance with regard to France and Spain. Spain, indeed, has lately agreed to our cutting longwood, according to the treaty, and sent strict orders to their governor to allow it. But you will observe, too, that there is not one word of reparation for the losses we lately sustained there. But France is not even so tractable. It will pay but half the money due upon a liquidated account, for the maintenance of their prisoners. Our request to have the compt de Stun were called and censured, they have absolutely rejected, though by the laws of war he might be hanged for having twice broke his parole. This does not do France honour. However, I think we shall be quiet, and that at the only time, perhaps this century, when we might with safety be otherwise. But this is nothing new, nor the first time, by many, when national honour and interest have been sacrificed to private. It has always been so, and so one may say, upon this occasion, what Horace says upon another, n'am fouit entre le nom. I have seen les comptes de Guillaume Vaude, and like most of them so little that I can hardly think them boltaires, but rather the scraps that have fallen from his table, and been worked up by inferior workmen under his name. I have not seen the other book you mentioned, the Dictionnaire Protatif. It has not yet come over. I shall next week go to take my winter quarters in London, the weather here being very cold and damp, and not proper for an old, sheltered and cold carcass like mine. In November I will go to the bath, to careen myself for the winter, and to shift the scene. Good night. Letter 272, London, October 19, 1764. My dear friend, yesterday morning Mr. came to me from Lord Halifax to ask me whether I thought you would approve a vacating your seat in Parliament during the remainder of it upon a valuable consideration, meaning money. My answer was that I really did not know your disposition upon that subject, but that I knew you would be very willing in general to accommodate them, so far as lay in your power, that your election to my knowledge had cost you two thousand pounds, that this Parliament had not sat above half its time, and that for my part I approved of the measure well enough, provided you had an equitable equivalent. I take it for granted that you will have a letter from, by this post, to that effect, so that you may consider what you will do. What I advise is this. Give them a good deal of galbenum in the first part of your letter. Le galbenum ne coup rien, and then say that you are willing to do as they please, but that you hope an equitable consideration will be had to the two thousand pounds, which your seat cost you in the present Parliament, of which not above half the term is expired. Moreover, that you take the liberty to remind them that you're being sent from Ratisbone last session, when you were just settled there, put you to the expense of three or four hundred pounds, for which you were allowed nothing, and that therefore you hope they will not think one thousand pounds too much, considering all these circumstances, but that in all events you will do whatever they desire. Upon the whole, I think this proposal will be advantageous to you, as you probably will not make use of your seat this Parliament, and further, as it will secure you from another unpaid journey from Dresden, in case they meet, or fear to meet, with difficulties in any ensuing session of the present Parliament. Whatever one must do, one should do debone gras. Dixie, God bless you. End of section two hundred and three, read by Professor Heather and Bai. For more free audio books or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section two hundred and four of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son, read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter two hundred and seventy-three, Bath November tenth, seventeen sixty-four. My dear friend, I'm much concerned at the account you gave me of yourself in your last letter. There is to be sure at such a town as Dresden, at least some one very skillful physician, whom I hope you have consulted, and I would have you acquaint him with all your several attacks of this nature, from your great one at Laubach, to your late one at Dresden. Tell him too that in your last illness in England, the physicians mistook your case and treated it as the gout, till Mati came, who treated it as a rheumatism and cured you. In my own opinion, you have never had the gout, but always the rheumatism, which to my knowledge is as painful as the gout can possibly be, and should be treated in a quite different way, that is, by cooling medicines and regimen, instead of those inflammatory cordials which they always administer where they suppose the gout, to keep it, they say, out of the stomach. I have been here now just a week, but have hitherto drank so little of the water that I can neither speak well nor ill of it. The number of people in this place is infinite, but very few whom I know. Hart seems settled here for life. He is not well that is certain, but not so ill, neither, as he thinks himself, nor at least would be thought. I long for your answer to my last letter, containing a certain proposal, which by this time I suppose has been made you, and which in the main I approve who you are accepting. God bless you, my dear friend, and send you better health. Adjou! Letter 274. London, February 26, 1765. My dear friend, your last letter of the fifth gave me as much pleasure as your former had given me uneasiness, and Larpin's acknowledgment of his negligence frees you from those suspicions which I own I did entertain, and which I believe everyone would, in the same concurrence of circumstances, have entertained. So much for that. You may depend upon what I promised you before mid-summer next, at farthest, and at least. All I can say of the affair between you, of the core diplomatique and the Saxon ministers, is que voilà bien du brû peune en l'aide ou l'heure. It will most certainly be soon made up, and in that negotiation show yourself as moderate and healing as your instructions from hence will allow, especially to compter de Fleming. The king of Prussia, I believe, has a mind to insult him personally as an old enemy, or else to quarrel with Saxony, that dares not quarrel with him. But some of the core diplomatique here assure me that it is only a pretense to recall his envoy, and to send, when matters shall be made up, a little secretary there, Amouan du Frey, as he does now to Paris and London. Comte Brûle is much in fashion here. I like him mightily. He has very much the tone de la bonne compagnie. Poor Schrader died last Saturday without the least pain or sickness. God bless you. Letter 275 London, April 22nd, 1765 My dear friend, the day before yesterday I received your letter of the third instant. I find that your important affair of the ceremonial is adjusted at last, as I foresaw it would be. Such minutiae are often laid hold on as a pretense, for powers who have a mind to quarrel, but are never tenaciously insisted upon where there is neither interest nor inclination to break. Comte Fleming, though a hot, is a wise man, and I was sure would not break with both England and Hanover, upon so trifling a point, especially during a minority. Apropos of a minority, the king is to come to the house to-morrow, to recommend a bill to settle a regency in case of his demise while his successor is a minor. Upon the king's late illness which was no trifling one, the whole nation cried out aloud for such a bill, for reasons which will readily occur to you, who know situations, persons, and characters here. I do not know the particulars of this intended bill, but I wish it may be copied exactly from that which was passed in late king's time, when the present king was a minor. I am sure there cannot be a better. You inquire about Monsieur du Gershys' affair, and I will give you as succinct an account as I can of so extraordinary and perplexed a transaction, but without giving you my own opinion of it by the common post. You know what passed at first between Mr. du Gershys and Monsieur du Gershys, in which both our ministers and Monsieur du Gershys, from utter inexperience in business, puzzled themselves into disagreeable difficulties. About three or four months ago Monsieur du Gershys published a brochure, a parcel of letters, from himself to the Duke de Choisseau, in which he positively asserts that Monsieur du Gershys prevailed with him, Versy, to come over into England to assassinate Déon. The words are, as well as I remember, que ce ne t'aurait pas pour subir de la sa plume, mais de son épis, quand le demande doit en Angleterre. This accusation of assassination, you may imagine, shocked Monsieur du Gershys, who complained bitterly to our ministers, and they both puzzled on for some time, without doing anything, because they did not know what to do. At last du Versy, about two months ago, applied himself to the grand jury of Middlesex, and made oath that Mr. du Gershys had hired him, du Versy, to assassinate Déon. Upon this deposition the grand jury found a bill of intended murder against Monsieur du Gershys, which Bill, however, never came to the petty jury. The King granted Annoli Prosecuit in favour of Monsieur du Gershys, and the Attorney General is actually prosecuting du Versy. Whether the King can grant Annoli Prosecuit in a criminal case, and whether les droits des gens extens to criminal cases, are two points which employ our domestic politicians, and the whole core diplomatique. Enfin, to use a very coarse and vulgar saying, il y a de la merde au bout de bâton quelque part. I see and hear these storms from shore, Suave, Mary Magno, etc. I enjoy my own security and tranquility, together with better health than I had reason to expect at my age, and with my constitution. However, I feel a gradual decay, though a gentle one, and I think that I shall not tumble but slide gently to the bottom of the hill of life. When that will be I neither know nor care, for I am very weary. God bless you. Malay died two days ago of a diarrhea, which he had carried with him to France, and brought back again hither. CHAPTER II. I have this moment received your letter of the twenty-second past, and I delayed answering your former in-daily, or rather hourly expectation of informing you of the birth of a new ministry, but in vain. For after a thousand conferences, all things remain still in the state which I described to you in my last. Lord S. has, I believe, given you a pretty true account of the present state of things. But my Lord is much mistaken I am persuaded, when he says that the king has thought proper to re-establish his old servants in the management of his affairs. For he shows them all the public dislike possible, and, at his levy, hardly speaks to any of them, but speaks by the hour to anybody else. Conferences in the meantime go on, of which it is easy to guess the main subject, but impossible, for me at least, to know the particulars. But this I will venture to prophecy that the whole will soon center in Mr. Pitt. You seem not to know the character of the queen. Here it is. She is a good woman, a good wife, a tender mother, and an un- meddling queen. The king loves her as a woman, but I verily believe has never yet spoken one word to her about business. I have now told you all that I know of these affairs, which, I believe, is as much as anybody else knows, who is not in the secret. In the meantime you easily guess that surmises, conjectures, and reports are infinite, and if, as they say, truth is but one, one million at least of these reports must be false, for they differ exceedingly. You have lost an honest servant by the death of poor Louis. I would advise you to take a clever young Saxon in his room, of whose character you may get authentic testimonies, instead of sending for one to France, whose character you can only know from far. When I hear more, I will write more, till when, God bless you. Letter 277, Blackheath, July 15, 1765. My dear friend, I told you in my last that you should hear from me again as soon as I had anything more to write, and now I have too much to write, therefore I will refer you to the Gazette, and the office letters, for all that has been done, and advise you to suspend your opinion as I do about all that is to be done. Many more changes are talked of, but so idly and variously, that I give credit to none of them. There has been pretty clean sweeping already, and I do not remember in my time to have seen so much at once, as an entire new Board of Treasury, and two new Secretaries of State, Cummultus alias, etc. Here is a new political arch almost built, but of materials of so different a nature, and without a keystone, that it does not, in my opinion, indicate either strength or duration. It will certainly require repairs, and a keystone next winter, and that keystone will and must necessarily be, Mr. Pitt. It is true he might have been that keystone now, and would have accepted it, but not without Lord Temple's consent, and Lord Temple positively refused. There was evidently some trick in this, but what is past my conjecturing? Davus sum, non-otipus. There is a manifest interregnum in the Treasury, for I do suppose that Lord Rockingham and Mr. Dowswell do not think proper to be very active. General Conway, who is your Secretary, has certainly parts at least equal to his business, to which I dare say he will apply. The same may be said, I believe, of the Duke of Grafton, and indeed there is no magic requisite for the executive part of those employments. The ministerial part is another thing. They must scramble with their fellow servants for power and favor as well as they can. Foreign affairs are not so much as mentioned, and I verily believe not thought of. But surely some counterbalance would be necessary to the family compact, and if not soon contracted will be too late. God bless you.