"I have heard a good deal of your proceedings from my correspondent and kinsman in Paris. You have acquitted yourself well, and it shall not be unknown in the quarter where it may be of most service to you.--I have been stopped by Mariamne's singing in the next room, and her voice has almost unmanned me; she is melancholy of late, and her only music now is taken from those ancestral hymns which our nation regard as the songs of the Captivity. Her tones at this moment are singularly touching, and I have been forced to lay down my pen, for she has melted me to tears. Yet her colour has not altogether faded lately, and I think sometimes that her eyes look brighter than ever! Heaven help me, if I should lose her. I should then be alone in the world. "You may rely on my intelligence--a war is _inevitable_. You may also rely on my conjecture--that it will be the most desperate war which Europe has yet seen. One that will break up _foundations_, as well as break down superstructures; not a war of politics but of principles; not a war for conquest but for ruin. All the treasuries of Europe will be bankrupt within a twelvemonth of its commencement; unless England shall become their banker. This will be the harvest of the men of money.--It is unfortunate that your money is all lodged for your commission; otherwise, in the course of a few operations, you might make cent per cent, which I propose to do. _Apropos_ of commissions. I had nearly omitted, in my own family anxieties, to mention the object for which I began my letter. I have _failed_ in arranging the affair of your commission! This was not for want of zeal. But the prospect of a war has deranged and inflamed every thing. The young nobility have actually besieged the Horse-guards. All the weight of the aristocracy has pressed upon the minister, and minor influence has been driven from the field. The spirit is too gallant a one to be blamed;--and yet--are there not a hundred other pursuits, in which an intelligent and active mind, like your own, might follow on the way to fortune? You have seen enough of campaigning to know, that it is not all a flourish of trumpets. Has the world but one gate, and that the Horse-guards? If my personal judgment were to be asked, I should feel no regret for a disappointment which may have come only to turn your knowledge and ability to purposes not less suitable to an ambitious spirit, nor less likely to produce a powerful impression on the world--the only thing, after all, worth living for! You may laugh at this language from a man of my country and my trade. But even _I_ have my ambition; and you may yet discover it to be not less bold than if I carried the lamp of Gideon, or wielded the sword of the Maccabee.--I must stop again; my poor restless child is coming into the room at this moment, complaining of the chill, in one of the finest days of summer. She says that this villa has grown sunless, airless, and comfortless.