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’, for I am told he always wears his; was his Royal Highness very gracious to you, or not?  I have my doubts about it.  The neutrality which he has concluded with Marechal de Richelieu, will prevent that bloody battle which you expected; but what the King of Prussia will say to it is another point.  He was our only ally; at present, probably we have not one in the world.  If the King of Prussia can get at Monsieur de Soubize’s, and the Imperial army, before other troops have joined them, I think he will beat them but what then?  He has three hundred thousand men to encounter afterward.  He must submit; but he may say with truth, ‘Si Pergama dextra defendi potuissent’.  The late action between the Prussians and Russians has only thinned the human species, without giving either party a victory; which is plain by each party’s claiming it.  Upon my word, our species will pay very dear for the quarrels and ambition of a few, and those by no means the most valuable part of it.  If the many were wiser than they are, the few must be quieter, and would perhaps be juster and better than they are.