There is a small quarto book entitled, ’Histoire Chronologique de la France’, lately published by Le President Henault, a man of parts and learning, with whom you will probably get acquainted at Paris.  I desire that it may always lie upon your table, for your recourse as often as you read history.  The chronology, though chiefly relative to the history of France, is not singly confined to it; but the most interesting events of all the rest of Europe are also inserted, and many of them adorned by short, pretty, and just reflections.  The new edition of ’Les Memoires de Sully’, in three quarto volumes, is also extremely well worth your reading, as it will give you a clearer, and truer notion of one of the most interesting periods of the French history, than you can yet have formed from all the other books you may have read upon the subject.  That prince, I mean Henry the Fourth, had all the accomplishments and virtues of a hero, and of a king, and almost of a man.  The last are the most rarely seen.  May you possess them all!  Adieu.

Pray make my compliments to Mr. Harte, and let him know that I have this moment received his letter of the 12th, N. S., from Antibes.  It requires no immediate answer; I shall therefore delay mine till I have another from him.  Give him the inclosed, which I have received from Mr. Eliot.

LETTER CXX

London, November 1, O. S. 1750

My dear friend:  I hope that this letter will not find you still at Montpelier, but rather be sent after you from thence to Paris, where, I am persuaded, that Mr. Harte could find as good advice for his leg as at Montpelier, if not better; but if he is of a different opinion, I am sure you ought to stay there, as long as he desires.

While you are in France, I could wish that the hours you allot for historical amusement should be entirely devoted to the history of France.  One always reads history to most advantage in that country to which it is relative; not only books, but persons being ever at hand to solve doubts and clear up difficulties.  I do by no means advise you to throw away your time in ransacking, like a dull antiquarian, the minute and unimportant parts of remote and fabulous times.  Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.  And a general notion of the history of France, from the conquest of that country by the Franks, to the reign of Louis the Eleventh, is sufficient for use, consequently sufficient for you.  There are, however, in those remote times, some remarkable eras that deserve more particular attention; I mean those in which some notable alterations happened in the constitution and form of government.  As, for example, in the settlement of Clovis in Gaul, and the form of government which he then established; for, by the way; that form of government differed in this particular from all the other Gothic governments, that the people, neither