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Cuilli. Pays de Vaud.
Wednesday. Night.

I have, my dearest friend, pretty copiously explained my present situation
in a letter which I have just transmitted to W W.W. The perusal of which
will sufficiently apprize you of all the circumstances, necessary to the comprehention
of that before you, and will therefore take away the necessity of repetition.

The labours of the day are finished. All the family are collected round
the supper table, and enjoying the simple luxuries of this inchanting Country
Ma petite Espouse is pouring out my coffee and covering the fragrant cake
with butter for her preceptor. Your letter is presented to me. I dispatch my
supper with the utmost expedition, and being furnished by my little spouse
with the writing implements, I brush away the fragments of one of ^{‸ from one part of} the table
and convert it into a desk, and, while the joyous circle around me are talking
and laughing with infinite clamour and good humour I am preparing
to compose an Answer to my friends seasonable and acceptable epistle.

He complains of a disorder in his eyes, by which he is prevented from
writing with his usual accuracy and copiousness. I cannot therefore but be
penetrated by the warmest gratitude, for a letter, which, though composed
in those circumstances, is so extensive and ample

I am unable to furnish him with any anecdotes of the lives or
characters of famous men, with which he is not already acquainted. London
and Paris are the Marts of literary Intelligence, and in this sequestered and
remote retirement, we are seldom honoured with the company of strangers,
and there is access to no other sources of information than the literary journals
I have indeed traversed, with true scientifical enthusiasm, the footsteps
of Haller and Le Saussure among the mountains of Savoy, and have
visited every place rendered memorable by the residence of Rousseau,
but nothing can be told of these men, which is not already known to you.
Edward Stantin has taken, at length, possession of his lodging, is extreemly
pleased with his situation and pursues his literary avocation with


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incredible diligence. We dispute with more vehemence and obstinacy than ^{‸ ever}
and I am certain that of whatever effects his friendship for me may be
productive, it will unquestionably render him a skillful logician and
disputant.

xxx'xxxxxxx" Thursday Morn.

The other day, in speaking of the English parties, I found that
my friend was the Advocate of Pitt: I consequently became the Champion
of Fox, and since that time we have been principally employed in
settling or rather in intangling to a greater degree of perplexity, the contradictory
claims of Whig and Tory. To day, as he entered my Apartment, he said
to me, with a joyful countenance, "Well, my friend, I have just recieved
Intelligence from England. My family and friends are well."

Br.
I am glad to hear it, but what information have you recieved with
regard to the health of the State? I expect to hear of nothing less than a
change of ministry; of the deposition of that Beardless usurper; the
dislodgement of that Canker worm Pitt from the bud of National prosperity
Stay a Moment. I know what your going to tell me, and I congratulate
you and your countrymen on the Restoration; not more a subject of exultation
to every true lover of his country than that of the Second Charles.

St.
Restoration! (replied my friend) that is just as probable as the
Salvation of your hero. I shall expect, that the former latter will take place
as quickly as the former. How near then, must be that event which you
mention! For who can have a better claim to the rewards of virtue than
the pure and holy Charles Fox. Instead of finding him a Minister I
shall expect to hear of his Advancement to the Archbishoprick of
Canterbury. Spotless man! Can any other recompence be equal to thy
merit? No.. No.. My good friend, be assured that it is the Mitre and not
the blue Ribband that awaits him. ha! ha! ha! Absolutely — another
Dunstan—another Becket—Shall we not erect churches to his own
honour, and constitute, of spotless virgins and ungambling youth, a
train of priests and priestesses to minister at his Alter?

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Br.
Hypocrisy and priesthood are the same. I will not therefore allow you
to exclude your friend Pitt, from that honourable Station. No one can
have a better titlle to it. Their characters it is true are opposite, but how often
do we see the wise and benevolent deity dishonoured by a selfish,
ignorant malignant priest! Priests it must be owned are a very
useful Generation, for the deformity of vice is as powerful an instrument
of Reformation as the beauty of virtue, and the life of priests form so
striking a contrast to their doctrines, and is such a complication of
moral deformities, that their examples are powerful auxiliaries to their
precepts, for is there any more effectual way of deterring any manner
from death, than by shewing him its ghastly and distorted image
in another? Whence arises the efficacy of Methodistical Oratory, but from
the pictures of Infernal torments with which they terrify their hearers?
If therefore you exalt Fox into a divinity, Pitt may justly demand
to be made his priest, and I doubt not but the Votaries of Patriotism
will find, in the depravity of the priest, as strong an incitement to virtue
as in the perfections of the god.

St.
Fox, to say the truth, is already a deity. Do not you see how
fervently he is worshiped by Prostitutes and Swinglers? How often does
he reveal himself to the innitiated in the hallowed recesses of Kings=
=place and the groom-porters? ha! ha! ha! Pure, immaculate and
upright Minister! How many pidgions think you, did the is commdious. ^commodious
supplies from the treasury enable him to pluck? Poor Sir Joseph
Strawbridge! Thou wast left as bare of feathers as the elbowes of
a spitted partridge, by the wondrous skill of this dice-throwing
Minister. Thou stalked into the house of commons, in the naked ^all the
majesty of pecuniary Nakedness, and sold to him thy vote in the
morning by whom thou hadst, the night before, been robbed of thy
purse. But seriously, my friend, have you any thing to alledge in favour


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of the moral character of Fox, or against that of William Pitt?

Br.
I will answer you seriously. Charles James Fox I honour and
admire. William Pitt I hate and despise."

———— ——— —— — This plain decoration of my opinion gave rise to a most violent
debate, in which the political characters of those two eminent men
were depicted with the minutest and most anatomical exactness,
and all the transactions of the ministerial reign of each a second
time discussed, and my friend harangued in defence of the Irish
Regulations, and against the celebrated India bill, with elegance
and energy far superior to that which was displayed by his illustrious
pattern on the like occasions. This diallogue was held under a beach
at the edge of the lake, and I could not ^{‸ forbear} smiling to observeing that
while my friend was in the midst of one of his harangues, and
was employed in vehemently hurling the thunder of oratorial
vengeance on the heads of the Authours of the american war and
the Coalition, some rustics on the lake, suspended their oars as they
passed by, [gap] and gazed with the wildest astonishment at this
singular Spectacle. I was leaning against the trunk of the tree
silent, and in the posture of the deepest attention with my eyes
fixed upon the graceful orator who stood before me, and, with the
utmost vehemence of tone and gesticulation, arraigned the political
Integrity of Fox and Burke:

Do not you think that hours thus spent are very profitably
employed? What can equal the utility and pleasure of sublime
and rational Conversation? Stanton possesses the liveliest Sencibility
and the strongest understanding. In the most critical Situations
he has displayed a fortitude and generosity that could not be

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expected from a Youth like him. He appears to me to resemble, very
strongly the Milord Edouard Bomston of Rousseau, and his
adventures are hardly less singular or less characteristick of an
elevated and heroic mind. Were I to relate them to you I should
but deform the more lively and exact narrative of my Journal
and yet if you insist upon it I know not whether I should not
be prevailed upon to furnish you with an imperfect Sketch of his
life. The hour is arrived of evening Recreation. Ma Petite Epouse
looks at me, with looks which seem to say, "My preceptor, the hour of
walking is come." I must close this letter therefore, and shall go
to the lake, on whose bank I stand for hours contemplating the
picturesque and romantic Scenes by which I am surrounded
or, with one arm incircling the slender waste of beautious Jacquilette
with the other I point out to her the names and situations of the
Constellations I explain to her the theory of the Universe and the
laws of the planetary System. I familiarise to her mind the sublime
maxims of the Newtonian Philosophy, with as much exactness &
perspicuity as is consistent with the want of Geometrical Assistance.
Her capacity is equal to the comprehention of the sublimest doctrines,
and how am I inspired when her eyes, withdrawn for a moment from
the starry firmament, cast upon me the mingled rays of
love and devotion! But if I begin to talk upon this Subject I shall
never have finished; I must therefore conclude with beseaching
you not absolutely to forget the solitary

C B. B~

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Vine Street. Philad.a

O my friend! How miserable should I be were I not rescued
from the tedious or distressful present, by the aid of an excursive
imagination? A long quotation in a letter is impossible intolera=
=ble, but there is a passage in Eloisa so expressive of my sentiments
and situation that I can scarcely forbear inserting it. Its purpose
however is to shew that the imagination is the Source of human
felicity. No one was ever less calculated for the drudgery of business than ^{‸ myself}
Science and Literature are the Idols of my soul: Love and friendship
constitute my existance. It is indeed to the influence of love that
I am indebted for the peculiarity of my character, and for the disgust
with which all realities are now beheld. O that heaven would
propitiously incline its ear and listen to my prayers. And what is it
for which I pray? This is my supplication. "My god! My father! listen to thy
supplicant! Give me liesure to traverse the world of Science in pursuit
of physical and moral truth: over the world of Imagination, in search
of intellectual excellence and moral beauty: give to my pencil, the power
of pourtraying it when discovered, and let me live and die, in the
bosom of friendship in the lap of love!"

I left Wilkins yesternight at Eleven OClock. Instead of returning
home, I hasted to the State house walks, and spent an hour in delightful
Meditation. Shall I give you a copy of my soliloquy? Will it not weary
you? Yes; I know it will. I do nothing but fatigue my friends with
self-interesting Narratives. I will here after be more sparing of them.

And yet what can be more delightful than these moral and literary
communications? They constitute all the happiness that I am capable of
tasting. What youth was ^ever more fortunate than I? Since thirteen years of


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age, I have enjoyed a state of perfect liberty. While others were trembling
under the frowning of a pedagouge, the slaves of scholastic discipline
and the children of learned prejudices, conning rules and performing
exercises, by which their curiosity was damped, their mind was fettered,
I, though a mere child, enjoyed the liberty of manhood and the
dignity of a thinking being, been suffered to go to rest and rise, to read
and write, what, as little and as much, as I thought proper; who
could Sketch a chart of the Streights of Mozambique or Gibralter or
Babelmandeb, before my compeers had scarcely learned to number their
fingers; who before I was Seventeen, riotted in the delicious banquets of
love and friendship, had familiarly conversed with learned and
accomplished foreigners; had gathered literary political and philosophi=
cal information from their genuine sources, and had seen my own
performances in the publications of other countries! —

But for what end do I thus enumerate the advantages which I
have heretofore enjoyed? Only as a Contrast to my present Situation.
How, my friend, can I describe it? How dredful is the solitude in which
I am now hopelessly immured? I am now no more than twenty, one,
and yet, such has been my uncommon destiny, that I look back
upon the past, as if I were arrived at my eightieth year. I count the
past not by months or years but by incidents important in their
causes, concomitants and consequences and by revolutions in opinions.
My Youth, my manhood is already past. Old age is come upon me
and the future—how comfortless and dreary! While I had a friend, I
was not alone in a wilderness, but now he is gone, and amidst a concoure
I experience all the horrors of irremediable Solitude. Fostered by gentle
passions my understanding had arrived at Maturity, all my
intellectual faculties had attained their fullest vigour at an age
when others are just [gap] emerging from childhood, and since nineteen
the energy of the thinking principle gradually diminishes. My faculties


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are, by visible degrees, losing their pristine force, the toch ^{‸ torch} of fancy is
extinguished, and he that, some four of or five years since, wrote, as if by
inspiration, spent hours of rapture at the feet of Angelic beauty, and
in oral or epistolary converse with the sublimest of friends is now—
where is he? I see him not. He exists only in remembrance. But
perhaps his faculties suffer only a temporary suspencion; Perhaps it is the
want of suitable objects, that occasions this cessation of their operation,
and, if again enlivened by the animating beams of friendship, the
mind, which we imagine to be motionless, torpid, dead, will recover
its activity. Is such thy opinion, my friend? Thy wisdom, permit me to
affirm, is theoretical. It wants the corroboratory sanction of experience. Listen
O mistaken reasoner! to her unquestionable dictates, as they flow from
her my lips, and learn that the loss of a real friend can never be
supplied. Never shalt thou behold C.B.B. as he appeared in the
eyes of his Mistress and his friend! His tongue, that was once the organ
of eloquent passions, has lost its volubility, his fancy no longer paints
with the force of truth, his pen no longer utters the dictates of inspiration.
Thou seest before thee the ruins of a man; and yet think not that thy
friendless friendship will be either, unacceptable or useless. I will make
me as happy (how often have I repeated it?) as it is possible for me to be.
And now my friend you see the disorder and you know the remedy, or at least
you are acquainted with one branch of my disease, with that which is,
susceptable, not of cure, but of alliviation, and the other branch, O great
Physician is beyond thy reach.

C. B. B~