of Richmond.  I have no interest in our present representative; nor if I had, is he returning.  Plate, of all earthly vanities, is the most impassable:  it is not Counerband in its metallic capacity, but totally so in its personal; and the officers of the custom-house not being philosophers enough to separate the substance from the superficies, brutally hammer both to pieces, and return you only the intrinsic:  a compensation which you, who are a member of Parliament, would not, I trow, be satisfied with.  Thus I doubt you must retrench your generosity to yourself, unless you can contract into an Elzevir size, and be content with any thing one can bring in one’s pocket.

My dear old friend was charmed with your mention of her, and made me vow to return you a thousand compliments.  She cannot conceive why you will not step hither.  Feeling in herself no difference between the spirits of twenty-three and seventy-three, she thinks there is no impediment to doing whatever one will but the want of eyesight.  If she had that, I am persuaded no consideration would prevent her making me a visit at Strawberry Hill.  She makes songs, sings them, remembers all that ever were made; and, having lived from the most agreeable to the most reasoning age, has all that was amiable in the last, all that is sensible in this, without the vanity of the former, or the pedant impertinence of the latter.  I have heard her dispute with all sorts of people, on all sorts of subjects, and never knew her in the wrong.  She humbles the learned, sets right their disciples, and finds conversation for every body.  Affectionate as Madame de S`evign`e, she has none of her prejudices, but a more universal taste; and, with the most delicate frame, her spirits hurry her through a life of fatigue that would kill me, if I was to continue here.  If we return by one in the morning from supping in the country, she proposes driving to the Boulevard or to the Foire St. Ovide, because it is too early to go to bed.  I had great difficulty last night to persuade her, though she was not well, not to sit up till’ between two or three for the comet; for which purpose she had appointed an astronomer to bring his telescopes to the President Henault’s, as she thought it would amuse me.  In short, her goodness to me is so excessive, that I feel unashamed at producing my withered person in a round of diversions, which I have quitted at home.  I tell a story; I do feel ashamed, and sigh to be in my quiet castle and cottage; but it costs me many a Pang, when I reflect that I shall probably never have resolution enough to take another journey to see this best and sincerest of friends, who loves me as much as my mother did! but it is idle to look forward—­what is next year?-a bubble that may burst for her or me, before even the flying year can hurry to the end of its almanack!  To form plans and projects in such a precarious life as this, resembles the enchanted castles"of fairy legends, in which every gate Was guarded by giants, dragons, etc.  Death or diseases bar every portal through which we mean to pass; and, though we may escape them and reach the last chamber, what a wild adventurer is he that centres his hopes at the end of such an avenue!  I am contented with the beggars of the threshold, and never propose going on, but as the gates open of themselves.