Dear Sir

Downing March 16^th 1793.

I am sorry to hear of your complaints. I wish you had, like me, braved the assaults of cold & heat from y^r earliest days, & you w^d not have felt this metamorphosis in y^r later days. I feel a much more solid evil; not in myself, but from a heavy visitation my dear youngest daughter has had, of a disorder in one eye: we are under the best hands, yet in compliance with the solicitations of friends we sh^d immediately come up to town, to try the medical help if the faculty there ^were she able to travel. - we have good hopes all will do well yet. She gains strength; & other promiseing symptoms appear.

I refer you to my Son for the rest. the will be in town on Tuesday: & brings with him, yr arctic Zoology. I am sorry more drawings were not done, but moses past most part of last year with us. – little work for myself. – Soon will appear my literary life: much is left out of what is in y^r M.S. copy, & much added with all my miscellanies except one.

How do I congratulate you, on the prospect The french have of feeling in all their vigour the scourges of sword civil war & famine: how finely has the tide turn’d. I scarcely can predict anything but a counter revolution,¹ & possibly a return of despotism.

I hope miss Bulls² enjoy better health than their. [...]³ my best wishes attend you all!

I am Dear Sir
most sincerely y^rs

Tho. Pennant

By all means buy Barres or Buffon for the pretty plates to decorate y^r arctic quadrupeds.

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Editorial notes

1. A revolt by peasants in the western département of the Vendée was triggered by attempts to enforce the military levy of 24 February 1793. During March the rebels gained control of several town in the area before troops were sent to counter them in May 1793. Jones, Longman Companion to the French Revolution, pp. 26–7.
2. Elizabeth and Catherine Bull.
3. A gap in the manuscript at this point is perfectly deliberate and refers to Bull’s ‘metamorphosis’, described in the opening paragraph. That in turn is a response to a comment made by Bull in his letter to Pennant, 8 March 1793 (1164).