fins' less
expensive, and turn to better account, than large dinners for great
companies.

I hope you have written to the Duke of Newcastle; I take it for granted
that you have to all your brother ministers of the northern department.
For God's sake be diligent, alert, active, and indefatigable in your
business. You want nothing but labor and industry to be, one day,
whatever you please, in your own way.

We think and talk of nothing here but Brest, which is universally
supposed to be the object of our great expedition. A great and important
object it is. I suppose the affair must be brusque, or it will not do. If
we succeed, it will make France put some water to its wine. As for my own
private opinion, I own I rather wish than hope success. However, should
our expedition fail, 'Magnis tamen excidit ausis', and that will be
better than our late languid manner of making war.

To mention a person to you whom I am very indifferent about, I mean
myself, I vegetate still just as I did when we parted; but I think I
begin to be sensible of the autumn of the year; as well as of the autumn
of my own life. I feel an internal awkwardness, which, in about three
weeks, I shall carry with me to the Bath, where I hope to get rid of it,
as I did last year. The best cordial I could take, would be to hear, from
time to time, of your industry and diligence; for in that case I should
consequently hear of your success. Remember your own motto, 'Nullum numen
abest si sit prudentia'. Nothing is truer. Yours.

LETTER CCVII

BLACKHEATH, September 23, 1757

MY DEAR FRIEND: I received but the day before yesterday your letter of
the 3d, from the headquarters at Selsingen; and, by the way, it is but
the second that I have received from you since your arrival at Hamburg.
Whatever was the cause of your going to the army, I approve of the
effect; for I would have you, as much as possible, see everything that is
to be seen. That is the true useful knowledge, which informs and improves
us when we are young, and amuses us and others when we are old; 'Olim
haec meminisse juvabit'. I could wish that you would (but I know you will
not) enter in a book, a short note only, of whatever you see or hear,
that is very remarkable: I do not mean a German ALBUM stuffed with
people's names, and Latin sentences; but I mean such a book, as, if you
do not keep now, thirty years hence you would give a great deal of money
to have kept. 'A propos de bottes',