LETTER LII.
I NEVER was so long without writing to MD as now, since I left them, nor ever will again while I am able to write. I have expected from one week to another that something would be done in my own affairs; but nothing at all is, nor I don't know when any thing will, or whether any at all, so slow are people at doing favours. I have been much out of order of late, with the old giddiness in my head. I took a vomit for it two days ago, and will take another about a day or two hence. I have eat mighty little fruit; yet I impute my disorder to that little, and shall henceforth wholly forbear it. I am engaged in a long work, and have done all I can of it, and wait for some papers from the ministry for materials for the rest, and they delay me, as if it were a favour I asked of them; so shat I have been idle here this good while, and it happened in a right time, when I was too much out of order to study. One is kept constantly out of humour by a thousand unaccountable things in publick proceedings; and when I reason with some friends, we cannot conceive how affairs can last as they are. God only knows, but it is a very melancholy subject for those who have any near concern in it. I am again endeavouring, as I was last year, to keep people from breaking to pieces
