Had I been to wish an advantageous situation for you, and a good debut in it, I could not have wished you either better than both have hitherto proved.  The rest will depend entirely upon yourself; and I own I begin to have much better hopes than I had; for I know, by my own experience, that the more one works, the more willing one is to work.  We are all, more or less, ‘des animaux d’habitude’.  I remember very well, that when I was in business, I wrote four or five hours together every day, more willingly than I should now half an hour; and this is most certain, that when a man has applied himself to business half the day, the other half, goes off the more cheerfully and agreeably.  This I found so sensibly, when I was at The Hague, that I never tasted company so well nor was so good company myself, as at the suppers of my post days.  I take Hamburg now to be ’le centre du refuge Allemand’.  If you have any Hanover ‘refugies’ among them, pray take care to be particularly attentive to them.  How do you like your house?  Is it a convenient one?  Have the ‘Casserolles’ been employed in it yet?  You will find ‘les petits soupers fins’ less expensive, and turn to better account, than large dinners for great companies.

I hope you have written to the Duke of Newcastle; I take it for granted that you have to all your brother ministers of the northern department.  For God’s sake be diligent, alert, active, and indefatigable in your business.  You want nothing but labor and industry to be, one day, whatever you please, in your own way.

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