The letter your Excellency did me the honor to write in the moment of your departure from this Country, conferred the highest honor upon me, & is not more flattering to my vanity, than it is productive of my gratitude.1

I shall ever reflect with pleasure Sir, on the readiness with which your communications to me have been made; & the dispatch & ability with which you have conducted business in the line to which I was called—and what will render these reflections more precious, is that you have accompanied them with marks of friendship & confidence which were as pleasing as they are honorable.

When I add Sir, that you have impressed me with sentiments of sincere respect and attachment, I do not speak the language of my own heart only; it is the universal voice, and your departure will always be regreted. The only consolation left us is, that you are gone to receive the smiles & approbation of a Prince, who knows full well how to distinguish, & how to reward merit.

It would give me great pleasure to make you a visit in France—to pay my respectful homage to a Sovereign to whom America is so much indebted—and to renew the friendships which I have had the honor to contract with so many respectable characters of your Nation, but I despair—my fortune has been injured by the war, & my private concerns are so much deranged, as to require more time to recover them than comports with the years of a man who is sliding down the stream of life as fast as I am—But whether I am in this or that Country, or wheresoever I may be, nothing will lessen the respect, or shake the attachment with which I have the honor to be Dr Sir Yrs &c. &c.