properly make an excuse for doing so. Go on so, with diligence, and you
will be, what I began to despair of your ever being, SOMEBODY. I am
persuaded, if you would own the truth, that you feel yourself now much
better satisfied with yourself than you were while you did nothing.

Application to business, attended with approbation and success, flatters
and animates the mind: which, in idleness and inaction, stagnates and
putrefies. I could wish that every rational man would, every night when
he goes to bed, ask himself this question, What have I done to-day? Have
I done anything that can be of use to myself or others? Have I employed
my time, or have I squandered it? Have I lived out the day, or have I
dozed it away in sloth and laziness? A thinking being must be pleased or
confounded, according as he can answer himself these questions. I observe
that you are in the secret of what is intended, and what Munchausen is
gone to Stade to prepare; a bold and dangerous experiment in my mind, and
which may probably end in a second volume to the "History of the
Palatinate," in the last century. His Serene Highness of Brunswick has,
in my mind, played a prudent and saving game; and I am apt to believe
that the other Serene Highness, at Hamburg, is more likely to follow his
example than to embark in the great scheme.

I see no signs of the Duke's resuming his employments; but on the
contrary I am assured that his Majesty is coolly determined to do as well
as he can without him. The Duke of Devonshire and Fox have worked hard to
make up matters in the closet, but to no purpose. People's self-love is
very apt to make them think themselves more necessary than they are: and
I shrewdly suspect, that his Royal Highness has been the dupe of that
sentiment, and was taken at his word when he least suspected it; like my
predecessor, Lord Harrington, who when he went into the closet to resign
the seals, had them not about him: so sure he thought himself of being