which I receive, that there is such an attention to your affairs, as
is really worthy your understanding and capacity. You will find your
account in it, by preventing ennui in yourself and roguery in
others, besides a thousand train (sic) of evils that are inseparable
from dissipation and negligence. I hope that you made my compliments
to Mr. Nicolson; il a l'air d'un personnage tres respectable, d'un
homme affide et sur. I cannot afford to wish any period of mine, at
ever so little distance, to be arrived, but I am tempted to wish
that I was two years older, for this reason, that I am confident
your affairs, and the state of your mind, will be pleasanter than it
has been in for a great while. So my wife(123) has made you another
agreeable visit for a fortnight, as she called it. I am sorry for
what you tell me of the visit which was not made. I don't love
excuses, but perhaps there may be some which need not give any
jealousy of want of true affection. I hope you will receive mine as
such, or I would set out for C(astle) H(oward) directly. I have
totally laid aside the thoughts of going this year to Matson, or
even to Gloucester. I have no engagement, but to be one day at
Luggershall, but that with difficulty can be dispensed with. Neither
Lord N(orth) or his Parliament, or anything else shall prevent me
from going to you when you desire it.

But the alteration in the little girl is so visibly for the better,
since she has been in this air, and Mrs. Craufurd acts so much like
a guardian to her, that I am in hopes by degrees to be the means of
placing her where my mind will for the present be easy about her,
and that she may be brought up with that education that, with the
help of other advantages, may in some measure recompense her for the
ill fortune of the first part of her life. This is, if my heart was
kid open, all that you could see in it at present, except the