pointment in miffing him, by fcribbling a few lines to him, as foon as I have finished these with which I now trouble your lordship. My excurfion to the United Provinces (which has been the fubftitute for my intended expedition to the United States) was extremely pleasing and improving to me. I returned laft Monday, and finding all my friends difperfed in various parts of England, am going for a few days into Buckinghamshire, whence I fhall go to Oxford, and must continue there till the Seffions. Should your lordship be in Hampshire any time in October, and should it be in all respects convenient to you, I will accept this year, with great pleasure, the obliging invitation to Chilbolton, which I was unfortunately prevented from accepting last year. I lament the unhappy diffentions among our great men, and clearly see the vanity of my anxi ous wish, that they would have played in tune fome time longer in the political con cert. The delays about the India judgeship have, CC it is true, greatly injured me; but with my patience and affiduity, I could easily recover my loft ground. I must however take the liberty here to allude to a most obliging letter of your lordship from Chilbolton, which I received fo long ago as last November, but was prevented from answering till you came to town. It was inexpreffibly flattering to me, but my intimate knowledge of the nature of my profeffion, obliges me to affure you, that it requires the whole man, and admits of no concurrent purfuits; that, consequently, I must either give it up, or it will engrofs me so much, that I shall not for fome years be able to enjoy the fociety of my friends, or the fweets of liberty. Whether it be a wife part to live uncomfortably, in order to die wealthy, is another question; but this I know by experience, and have heard old practitioners make the fame observation, that a lawyer who is in earneft, must be chained to his chambers and the bar for ten or twelve years together. In regard to your lordship's indulgent and flattering prediction, that my Effay on Bailment would be my laft work, and that for the future, business and the public would allow me to write no more, I doubt whether it will be accomplished, whatever may be my practice or fituation; for I have already prepared many tracts on jurisprudence; and when I fee the volumes written by Lord Coke, whofe annual gains were twelve or fourteen thousand pounds, by Lord Bacon, Sir Matthew Hale, and a number of judges and chancellors, I cannot think that I should be hurt in my profeffional career, by publishing now and then a law tract upon fome interesting branch of the science; and the science itself is indeed fo complex, that, without writing, which is the chain of memory, it is impoffible to remember a thoufandth part of what we read or hear. Since it is my wish therefore to become in time as great a lawyer as Sulpicius, I fhall probably leave as many volumes of my works, as he is faid to have written. As to politics, I begin to think, that the natural propensity of men to diffent from one another, will pre vent them, in a corrupt age, from uniting in any laudable defign; and at prefent I have nothing to do but to reft on my oars, which the Greek philofophers, I believe, called iiv, a word which Cicero applies in one of his letters to the same subject. My best respects to the ladies, for whom I would certainly have brought fome Virginia nightingales, if my western expedition had taken place, fince I was informed by the captain, with whom I should have failed, that they might have been kept in the cabin without any danger. Mr. JONES to Mr. Baron EYRE. DEAR SIR, Oct. 2, 1782. I have been in England about a fortnight, and was made happyby learning in John Street, that you had long been reftored to health from the illness which confined you, to my inexpreffible concern, at the time when I fet out for the Continent. The cause of my return is, in few words, this; I ought to have forefeen, what I never theless did not expect, that the fame timidity or imbecility, which made my unhappy friend declare, that he neither could nor would go to Virginia without me, would make him declare, when he faw the fails and the waves, that he neither would nor could go at all. A dread of fome imaginary danger fo enervated him, that he kept his bed, and wrote me word, that if he ftaid a week longer at Nantes, he fhould lofe his reafon or his life. My expoftulations had fome little effect, but there was no dependence, I found, on a man who had none, he confeffed, upon himself; and when I discovered that no fhip, with even tolerable accommodation, would fail till September, so that I could not keep my word with my friends in England, by returning from America before the new year, I came back through Normandy about the middle of August, and having a few weeks to spare, made a very pleafant and improving excurfion into Holland, which I traverfed from South to North. The detail of my expedition may not perhaps be A |