You, Sir, have no need of being told by me, how much may be added by
your attention and patronage to experimental knowledge and natural
history. There are arts of manufacture practised in the countries in
which you preside, which are yet very imperfectly known here, either to
artificers or philosophers. Of the natural productions, animate and
inanimate, we yet have so little intelligence, that our books are
filled, I fear, with conjectures about things which an Indian peasant
knows by his senses.
Many of those things my first wish is to see; my second to know, by such
accounts as a man like you will be able to give.
As I have not skill to ask proper questions, I have likewise no such
access to great men as can enable me to send you any political
information. Of the agitations of an unsettled government, and the
struggles of a feeble ministry[230], care is doubtless taken to give you
more exact accounts than I can obtain. If you are inclined to interest
yourself much in publick transactions, it is no misfortune to you to be
so distant from them.
That literature is not totally forsaking us, and that your favourite
language is not neglected, will appear from the book[231], which I
should have pleased myself more with sending, if I could have presented
it bound: but time was wanting.
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