the value and nature of the fund by which the whole is supported?  This latter I call seeing, the former is only starting.  Many people take the opportunity of ‘les vacances’, to go and see the, empty rooms where the several chambers of the parliament did sit; which rooms are exceedingly like all other large rooms; when you go there, let it be when they are full; see and hear what is doing in them; learn their respective constitutions, jurisdictions, objects, and methods of proceeding; hear some causes tried in every one of the different chambers; ‘Approfondissez les choses’.

I am glad to hear that you are so well at Marquis de St. Germain’s, —­[At that time Ambassador from the King of Sardinia at the Court of France.]—­of whom I hear a very good character.  How are you with the other foreign ministers at Paris?  Do you frequent the Dutch Ambassador or Ambassadress?  Have you any footing at the Nuncio’s, or at the Imperial and Spanish ambassadors?  It is useful.  Be more particular in your letters to me, as to your manner of passing your time, and the company you keep.  Where do you dine and sup oftenest? whose house is most your home?  Adieu.  ‘Les Graces, les Graces’.

LETTER CXXXV

London, March 18, O. S. 1751.

My dear friend:  I acquainted you in a former letter, that I had brought a bill into the House of Lords for correcting and reforming our present calendar, which is the Julian, and for adopting the Gregorian.  I will now give you a more particular account of that affair; from which reflections will naturally occur to you that I hope may be useful, and which I fear you have not made.  It was notorious, that the Julian calendar was erroneous, and had overcharged the solar year with eleven days.  Pope Gregory the Thirteenth corrected this error; his reformed calendar was immediately received by all the Catholic powers of Europe, and afterward adopted by all the Protestant ones, except Russia, Sweden, and England.  It was not, in my opinion, very honorable for England to remain, in a gross and avowed error, especially in such company; the inconveniency of it was likewise felt by all those who had foreign correspondences, whether political or mercantile.  I determined, therefore, to attempt the reformation; I consulted the best lawyers and the most skillful astronomers, and we cooked up a bill for that purpose.  But then my difficulty began:  I was to bring in this bill, which was necessarily composed of law jargon and astronomical calculations, to both which I am an utter stranger.  However, it was absolutely necessary to make the House of Lords think that I knew something of the matter; and also to make them believe that they knew something of it themselves, which they do not.  For my own part, I could just as soon have talked Celtic or Sclavonian to them as astronomy, and they would have understood me full as well:  so I resolved to do better than speak to