nowledge the obligations you have to them for the kindness they have
shown you during your stay at Paris: assure them that wherever you are,
you will remember them with gratitude; wish for opportunities of giving
them proofs of your 'plus tendre et respectueux souvenir; beg of them in
case your good fortune should carry them to any part of the world where
you could be of any the least use to them, that they would employ you
without reserve. Say all this, and a great deal more, emphatically and
pathetically; for you know 'si vis me flere'. This can do you no harm, if
you never return to Paris; but if you do, as probably you may, it will be
of infinite use to you. Remember too, not to omit going to every house
where you have ever been once, to take leave and recommend yourself to
their remembrance. The reputation which you leave at one place, where you
have been, will circulate, and you will meet with it at twenty places
where you are to go. That is a labor never quite lost.

This letter will show you, that the accident which happened to me
yesterday, and of which Mr. Grevenkop gives you account, hath had no bad
consequences. My escape was a great one.

LETTER CLXVI

LONDON, May 11, O. S. 1752.

DEAR FRIEND: I break my word by writing this letter; but I break it on
the allowable side, by doing more than I promised. I have pleasure in
writing to you; and you may possibly have some profit in reading what I
write; either of the motives were sufficient for me, both for you I
cannot withstand. By your last I calculate that you will leave Paris upon
this day se'nnight; upon that supposition, this letter may still find you
there.

Colonel Perry arrived here two or three days ago, and sent me a book from
you; Cassandra abridged. I am sure it cannot be too much abridged. The
spirit of that most voluminous work, fairly extracted, may be contained
in the smallest duodecimo; and it is most astonishing, that there ever
could have been people idle enough to write or read such endless heaps of
the same stuff. It was, however, the occupation of thousands in the last
century, and is still the private, though disavowed, amusement of young
girls, and sentimental ladies. A lovesick girl finds, in the captain with
whom she is in love, all the courage and all the graces of the tender and
accomplished Oroondates: and many a grown-up, sentimental lady, talks
delicate Clelia to the hero, whom she would engage to eternal love, or
lament