I am almost sorry that your letter arrived at this crisis; I cannot help venting a little of what haunts me.  But it is better to thank Providence for the tranquillity and happiness we enjoy in this country, in spite of the philosophizing serpents we have in our bosom, the Paines, the Tookes, and the Woolstoncrofts.  I am glad you have not read the tract of the last-mentioned writer.  I would not look at it, though assured it contains neither metaphysics nor politics; but as she entered the lists on the latter, and borrowed her title from the demon’s book, which aimed at spreading the wrongs of men, she is excommunicated from the pale of my library.  We have had enough of new systems, and the world a great deal too much, already.

Let us descend to private life.  Your friend Mrs. Boscawen, I fear, is unhappy:  she has lost most suddenly her son-in-law, Admiral Leveson.  Mrs. Garrick I have scarcely seen this whole summer.  She is a liberal Pomona to me—­I will not say an Eve; for though she reaches fruit to me, she will never let Me in, as if I were a boy, and would rob her orchard.

As you interest yourself about a certain trumpery old person, I with infinite gratitude will add a line on him.  He is very tolerably well, weak enough certainly, yet willing to be contented; he is satisfied with knowing that he is at his best.  Nobody grows stronger at seventy-five, nor recovers the use of limbs half lost; nor-though neither deaf nor blind, nor in the latter most material point at all impaired; nor, as far as he can find on strictly watching himself, much damaged as to common uses in his intellects—­does the gentleman expect to avoid additional decays, if his life shall be further protracted.  He has been too fortunate not to be most thankful for the past, and most submissive for what is to come, be it more or less.  He forgot to say, that the warmth of his heart towards those he loves and esteems has not suffered the least diminution, and consequently he is as fervently as ever Saint Hannah’s most sincere friend and humble servant, Orford.

(839) Now first collected.

(840) From the 2d to the 6th of September, these internal atrocities proceeded uninterrupted, protracted by the actors for the sake of the daily pay of a Louis to each.  M. Thiers states, that Billaud Varennes appeared publicly among the assassins, and encouraged what were called the labourers.  “My friends,” said he, “by taking the lives of villains you have saved the country.  France owes you eternal gratitude, and the municipality offers you twenty livres apiece, and you shall be paid immediately.”  All the reports of the time differ in their estimate of the number of the victims.  “That estimate,” says M. Thiers, varies from six to twelve thousand in the prisons of France.”  Vol. ii. p. 45.-E.