A general election ensued. I was returned for ----. I entered
eagerly into domestic politics; your friendship, Lord Aspeden's
kindness, my own wealth and industry, made my success almost
unprecedentedly rapid. Engaged heart and hand in those minute yet
engrossing labours for which the aspirant in parliamentary and state
intrigue must unhappily forego the more enlarged though abstruser
speculations of general philosophy, and of that morality which may be
termed universal, politics, I have necessarily been employed in very
different pursuits from those to which Mordaunt's contemplations are
devoted, yet have I often recalled his maxims, with admiration at
their depth, and obtained applause for opinions which were only
imperfectly filtered from the pure springs of his own.

It is about six months since he has returned to England, and he has
very lately obtained a seat in Parliament: so that we may trust soon
to see his talents displayed upon a more public and enlarged theatre
than they hitherto have been; and though I fear his politics will be
opposed to ours, I anticipate his public debut with that interest
which genius, even when adverse to one's self, always inspires. Yet I
confess that I am desirous to see and converse with him once more in
the familiarity and kindness of private intercourse. The rage of
party, the narrowness of sectarian zeal, soon exclude from our
friendship all those who differ from our opinions; and it is like
sailors holding commune for the last time with each other, before
their several vessels are divided by the perilous and uncertain sea,
to confer in peace and retirement for a little while with those who
are about to be launched with us on that same unquiet ocean where any
momentary caprice of the winds may disjoin us forever, and where our
very union is only a sympathy in toil and a fellowship in danger.