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Virginia, you have had the best wishes that could be wafted you from the friendly bosom of your Humble Servt M Warren mwp1 78 to janet livingston montgomery Milton April 1785 This will be handed [to?] my friend Mrs Montgomery by a lady who need not wish for recommendatory letters to those whose taste and education qualify them for the conversation of the learned and polite. Mrs Macaulay’s genius does honour to her sex: her works have established the celebrity of her name, and for the honour of human nature, I hope her principles will endear her to Americans: who ought to bestow lasting applause on all those who have distinguished themselves either by the sword or the pen in defence of those opinions, which have produced a revolution as remarkable as any recorded in history. After a short acquaintance you will wonder it is with regret I see this lady about to leave this part of America. I have assured her the pleasure will be mutual when she meets Mrs Montgomery, her excellent mother, and amiable sisters nor will the gentleman of your fraternal circle be less pleased with her conversation. The last time I had the pleasure of receiving from you was the[?] the hand of an agreeable, sensible, French gentleman, whose visit was much shorter than we wished. Colonel Tournant[?] appears not only a gallant, polite officer, but the man of talents equal to his education among the literati of France. I hear you have had a gay and I hope a happy winter in your native residence, I understand the city of New York is briliant beyond its former appearance: and its inhabitants in the full enjoyment of those pleasures which a life of dissipation and amusement can give. If your days my dear madam are clouded by the recollection of the past, you will also recollect that you have still a balance in the scale of blessings. 200  to janet montgomery, april 1785 The favours of providence exhibit the equal justice of his dealings whose adjustment are wise and [??] system perfect. This we may learn from every thing that passes before us though we must wait till the curtain falls, before we can fathom the necessity of those painful conflicts we feel, and the inequalities of happiness which we see fall to the lot of man below. To those who consider this world and the worlds that surround it as the work of chance, these observations may be ridiculed as the dream of supertition and weakness but my friend can smile with me on the much greater absurdities of the sceptic, who relinquishes the care of his God, and denies the superior tendency of his creator. We will console ourselves therein and rely upon that providence that mixes our cup as he sees fit, and continues, or cuts off, the pleasures of social or domestic life. These reflections though not fashionable in the intercourse of polite life, are natural to a mother who has spent the winter past in an unremitting attention, by the languid bed of an amiable youth, whose complaints had almost cut off the hopes of recovery. But we begin again to flatter ourselves , that your favourite among my little circle, the sensible, the sedate, the social, and the beloved Charles will yet be spared to his friends, and to the world. I hope I shall hear that an introduction to the acquaintance of Mrs Macaulay has given you pleasure as it really has to your affectionate friend M Warren mwp1 79 to john adams Milton September 1785 Sir The account of your sons arrival in America you will have from himself ;—the pleasure his friends recieve from his return you will not doubt, and though you had not requested my attention to him—be assured that in every instance where my advice may be either useful or pleasing I shall treat him as a son of my own. This I am disposed to do not only from the to john adams, september 1785  201 ...

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