BLACKHEATH, August 1, 1763.

MY DEAR FRIEND: I hope that by this time you are pretty well settled at
Ratisbon, at least as to the important points of the ceremonial; so that
you may know, to precision, to whom you must give, and from whom you must
require the 'seine Excellentz'. Those formalities are, no doubt,
ridiculous enough in themselves; but yet they are necessary for manners,
and sometimes for business; and both would suffer by laying them quite
aside.

I have lately had an attack of a new complaint, which I have long
suspected that I had in my body, 'in actu primo', as the pedants call it,
but which I never felt in 'actu secundo' till last week, and that is a
fit of the stone or gravel. It was, thank God, but a slight one; but it
was 'dans toutes les formes'; for it was preceded by a pain in my loins,
which I at first took for some remains of my rheumatism; but was soon
convinced of my mistake, by making water much blacker than coffee, with a
prodigious sediment of gravel. I am now perfectly easy again, and have no
more indications of this complaint.

God keep you from that and deafness! Other complaints are the common, and
almost the inevitable lot of human nature, but admit of some mitigation.
God bless you!




LETTER CCLVIII