Whatever your amusements, or pleasures, may be at Hamburg, I dare say you taste them more sensibly than ever you did in your life, now that you have business enough to whet your appetite to them.  Business, one-half of the day, is the best preparation for the pleasures of the other half.  I hope, and believe, that it will be with you as it was with an apothecary whom I knew at Twickenham.  A considerable estate fell to him by an unexpected accident; upon which he thought it decent to leave off his business; accordingly he generously gave up his shop and his stock to his head man, set up his coach, and resolved to live like a gentleman; but, in less than a month, the man, used to business, found, that living like a gentleman was dying of ennui; upon which he bought his shop and stock, resumed his trade, and lived very happily, after he had something to do.  Adieu.

LETTER CCXVII

London, February 24, 1758

My dear friend:  I received yesterday your letter of the 2d instant, with the inclosed; which I return you, that there may be no chasm in your papers.  I had heard before of Burrish’s death, and had taken some steps thereupon; but I very soon dropped that affair, for ninety-nine good reasons; the first of which was, that nonody is to go in his room, and that, had he lived, he was to have been recalled from Munich.  But another reason, more flattering for you, was, that you could not be spared from Hamburg.  Upon the whole, I am not sorry for it, as the place where you are now is the great entrepot of business; and, when it ceases to be so, you will necessarily go to some of the courts in the neighborhood (Berlin, I hope and believe), which will be a much more desirable situation than to rush at Munich, where we can never have any business beyond a subsidy.  Do but go on, and exert yourself were you are, and better things will soon follow.

Surely the inaction of our army at Hanover continues too long.  We expected wonders from it some time ago, and yet nothing is attempted.  The French will soon receive reinforcements, and then be too strong for us; whereas they are now most certainly greatly weakened by desertion, sickness, and deaths.  Does the King of Prussia send a body of men to our army or not? or has the march of the Russians cut him out work for all his troops?  I am afraid it has.  If one body of Russians joins the Austrian army in Moravia, and another body the Swedes in Pomerania, he will have his hands very full, too full, I fear.  The French say they will have an army of 180,000 men in Germany this year; the Empress Queen will have 150,000; if the Russians have but 40,000, what can resist such a force?  The King of Prussia may say, indeed, with more justice than ever any one person could before him, ‘Moi.  Medea superest’.

You promised the some egotism; but I have received none yet.  Do you frequent the Landgrave?  ‘Hantex vous les grands de la terre’?  What are the connections of the evening?  All this, and a great deal more of this kind, let me know in your next.