se tenderness has a
melancholy air. When she forgets her concern, and returns to her natural
disposition--gaiety, every paragraph has novelty: her allusions, her
applications are the happiest possible. She has the art of making you
acquainted with all her acquaintance, and attaches you even to the spots
she inhabited. Her language is correct, though unstudied; and, when her
mind is full of any great event, she interests you with the warmth of a
dramatic writer, not with the chilling impartiality of an historian.
Pray read her accounts of the death of Turenne, and of the arrival of
King James in France, and tell me whether you do not know their persons
as if you had lived at the time.

For my part, if you will allow me a word of digression (not that I have
written with any method), I hate the cold impartiality recommended to
Historians: "Si vis me flere, dolendum est Primum ipsi tibi:"[1] but,
that I may not wander again, nor tire, nor contradict you any more, I
will finish now, and shall be glad if you will dine at Strawberry Hill
next Sunday, and take a bed there, when I will tell you how many more
parts of your book have pleased me, than have startled my opinions, or,
perhaps, prejudices. I have the honour to be, Sir, with regard, &c.

[Footnote 1: A quotation from Horace's "Ars Poetica," 102.]

_MINISTERIAL DIFFICULTIES--THE AFFAIR OF THE NECKLACE IN
PARIS--FLUCTUATING UNPOPULARITY OF STATESMEN--FALLACIES OF HISTORY._

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

STRAWBERRY HILL, _Aug._ 26, 1785.

Though I am delighted to see your handwriting, I beg you will indulge me
no more with it. It fatigues you, and that gives me more pain than your
letters can give me satisfaction. Dictate a few words on your health to
your secretary; it will suffice. I don't care a straw about the King and
Queen of Naples, nor whether they visit your little Great Duke and
Duchess. I am glad when monarchs are playing with one another, instead
of scratching: it is better they should be idle than mischievous. As I
desire you not to write, I cannot be alarmed at a strange hand.

Your philosophic account of yourself is worthy of you. Still, I am
convinced you are better than you seem to think. A cough is vexatious,
but in old persons is a great preservative. It is one of the forms in
which the gout appears, and exercises and clears the lungs. I know
actually two persons, no chickens, who are always very ill if they have
no annual cough. You may imagine that I h