considering your destination. You do well to get your materials all
ready, before you begin your work. As you buy and (I am told) read books
of this kind, I will point out two or three for your purchase and
perusal; I am not sure that I have not mentioned them before, but that is
no matter, if you have not got them. 'Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire
du 17ieme Siecle', is a most useful book for you to recur to for all the
facts and chronology of that country: it is in four volumes octavo, and
very correct and exact. If I do not mistake, I have formerly recommended
to you, 'Les Memoires du Cardinal de Retz'; however, if you have not yet
read them, pray do, and with the attention which they deserve. You will
there find the best account of a very interesting period of the minority
of Lewis XIV. The characters are drawn short, but in a strong and
masterly manner; and the political reflections are the only just and
practical ones that I ever saw in print: they are well worth your
transcribing. 'Le Commerce des Anciens, par Monsieur Huet. Eveque
d'Avranche', in one little volume octavo, is worth your perusal, as
commerce is a very considerable part of political knowledge. I need not,
I am sure, suggest to you, when you read the course of commerce, either
of the ancients or of the moderns, to follow it upon your map; for there
is no other way of remembering geography correctly, but by looking
perpetually in the map for the places one reads of, even though one knows
before, pretty near, where they are.

Adieu! As all the accounts which I receive of you grow better and better,
so I grow more and more affectionately, Yours.




LETTER XLIX