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LETTER II.

My Dear Friend,

I Know your anxiety to learn the progress of my un-dertaking.

Neither my fortune nor my ceconomy have ever allow-ed me to be in affluence, I therefore enter on any businessrequiring expence, with some disadvantage. In Italy I Ihould have sought the patronage and genero-sity of my Sovereign, or of some liberal and opulentnobleman, to enable me to sustain the expence of mypresent undertaking. Here wealth is more equally dif-fused ; and by any contrivance that can gratify the curio-sity of the people, sums of money are immediately col-lected, without the anxiety.and mortification of peti-tioning the great. This has, in some measure, banishedpatronage from England ; but ingenious men are perhapsthe better rewarded, and are not rendered slaves to the pur-poses and caprices of patrons. Hence are innumerable ex-hibitions, which are always open in London , and whichare means of circulation, convenience, information andutility, almost unknown in every other country.

To proceed in my design, I have been obliged to adoptthis custom. You will not be offended that a secretary toan embassy exhibits his Balloon, when you know thatthe first artists in the nation, under the immediate protec-tion of the King, and incorporated into an academy, ex-hibit their pictures yearly, and that the price of admis-sion is one shilling. This expedient adds two or threethousand a year to the income of the academy, and is nei-ther an inconvenience or a dishonour, where the diffusion

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