body in Paris but Mr. Skipwith that
has been in the habit of transacting business with the french Government
since the revolution began. He is on a good standing with them, and if
the chance of the day should place you in the presidency you cannot do
better than appoint him for any purpose you may have occasion for in
France. He is an honest man and will do his country justice, and that
with civility and good manners to the government he is commissioned to
act with; a faculty which that Northern Bear Timothy Pickering wanted,
and which the Bear of that Bear, John Adams, never possessed.

I know not much of Mr. Murray, otherwise than of his unfriendliness to
every American who is not of his faction, but I am sure that Joel Barlow
is a much fitter man to be in Holland than Mr. Murray. It is upon
the fitness of the man to the place that I speak, for I have not
communicated a thought upon the subject to Barlow, neither does he
know, at the time of my writing this (for he is at Havre), that I have
intention to do it.

I will now, by way of relief, amuse you with some account of the
progress of iron bridges.

[Here follows an account of the building of the iron bridge at
Sunderland, England, and some correspondence with Mr. Milbanke, M. P.,
which will be given more fully and precisely in a chapter of vol. IV.
(Appendix), on Iron Bridges, and is therefore omitted here.]

I have now made two other Models [of bridges]. One is pasteboard, five
feet span and five inches of height from the cords. It is in the opinion
of every person who has seen it one of the most beautiful objects the
eye can behold. I then cast a model in metal following the construction
of that in paste-board and of the same dimensions. The whole was
executed in my own Chamber. It is far superior in strength, elegance,
and readiness in execution to the model I made in America, and which you
saw in Paris.(1) I shall bring those models with me when I come
home, which will be as soon as I can pass the seas in safety from the
piratical John Bulls. I suppose you have seen, or have heard of the
Bishop of Landaff's answer to my second part of the Age of Reason. As
soon as I got a copy of it I began a third part, which served also as an
answer to the Bishop; but as soon as the clerical society for promoting
_Christian Knowledge_ knew of my intention to answer the Bishop, they
prosecuted, as a Society, the printer of the first and second parts, to
prevent that answer