"MY DEAR WILBERFORCE,--I have been so diligently _turning my thoughts_ on all sides since we parted, that tho' they have been turned to you as often as to any other quarter, I have never found the moment to put them into writing till now. I have not time to thank you sufficiently for the picturesque and poetical epistle I received from you dated, as I remember, from your boat, from the inside and the imperial of your postchaise, and two or three places more, and containing among a variety of accurate descriptions one in particular, viewed from all those different situations, of the sun setting in the middle of the day. I hope the whole of your tour has continued to be embellished by these happy incidents, and has kept you throughout in as mad and rhapsodical a mood as at that moment. I have some remorse in the immediate occasion of my writing to you just now; which, however, all things considered, I am bound to overcome. Be it known to you, then, that as much as I wish you to bask on, under an Italian sun, I am perhaps likely to be the instrument of snatching you from your present paradise, and hurrying you back to 'the rank vapours of this sin-worn mould.' A variety of circumstances concur to make it necessary to give notice immediately on the meeting of Parliament of the day on which I shall move the question of the Reform. We meet on the _25th of January_, and I think _about three weeks after_, which will allow full time for a call of the House, will be as late as I can easily defer it. I would not for a thousand reasons have you absent, tho' I hate that you should come before your time, and if any particular circumstances made a week or ten days a matter of real importance to you, I think I could postpone it as long as that. "Only let me hear from you positively before the meeting of Parliament. The chief thing necessary is that I should then be able to name _some_ day, and the precise day is of less consequence. You will hardly believe me if I tell you that I entertain the strongest hope of coming very near, if not absolutely succeeding. I have seen the Oracle of Yorkshire, Wyvill, and made him completely happy with the prospect. "All things are going, on the whole, exceeding well. You will have learnt that the _Old Boy_ at last overcame his doubts, and has ventured single into the Cabinet, which is a great point happily settled. God bless you. "Ever most faithfully yours. "W. PITT." "1784.