accrue to us here, are greatly overbalanced by the sacrifices we make of our constitutions. I have not been unacquainted with the fickleness of fortune, and may safely say I have not enjoyed one happy day since I left my native country. I am not acquainted with any one family in the place, and have not assurance enough to introduce myself without being asked. If the state I am now in will admit of any happiness, it must be when I am writing to my friends. Letters surely were first invented for the comfort of such solitary wretches as myself. Having lost the substantial pleasure of seeing them, I shall in some measure compensate this loss, by the satisfaction I shall find in their writings. When you write me, I beg it may be carelessly, and without study, for I had much rather read the dictates of the heart than those of the understanding. The pacquet is just now going to be closed, which hastens me to a conclusion sooner than I designed. I desire you to tender my duty to my uncle and aunt, love to my cousins, and service to all friends; and it will greatly add to the obligations of him, who esteems it his greatest happiness to be thought "Your kind and loving Cousin, "ROBT. CLIVE." Fort St. George, Feb. 16th, 1744-5. These letters, though their rather laboured and incorrect style indicates the writer to have then had little practice in epistolary correspondence, show, however, the more essential qualities of excellent principles and an affectionate heart. His spirits seem already tinged by that melancholy which occasionally attended him through life. It is a curious, and not uninstructive sight, to observe the man who, in a few years, was to raise himself by his commanding talents and heroic daring, to an acknowledged pre-eminence above all his countrymen in the East, for several months after his first touching on the shores of that country, the scene of his future glory, acknowledging that he knew not one family in it, and shrinking with a sensitive diffidence from the exertion of introducing himself. Though affectionate, he was wayward and reserved. From this time till 1746, when Madras was taken, there are no accounts of him, except some anecdotes, tending to prove that he was very ill suited to the condition of life in which he was placed. His impatience of control, and wayward and impracticable firmness, never forsook him. On one occasion it appears that his conduct to the secretary under whom the writers were placed on their first arrival, was so inconsistent with the rules of official discipline, that the governor, to whom it was reported, commanded him to ask that gentleman's pardon. With this order he complied rather ungraciously; but the secretary immediately after, before his irritation had time to subside, having invited him to dinner,--"No, Sir," replied Clive, "the governor did not command me to _dine_ with you."[23] He is stated to have hazarded, on more than one