Thanks for second fasciculus [probably Smith's "Spicilegium botanicum"] and Smith's "Flora Lapponica", which "as far excels all other floras, as the system of Linn[aeus] does all other systems".
Answers Smith's queries on various subjects [for Smith's "Sketch of a Tour on the Continent"]: transcribes a quote by [Joseph] Addison on enthusiasm; transcript of his notes made at Sens 1 November 1786 on five figures on a monument; transcript of his notes made 8 November 1786 on a Bibliotheque de la Ville in a former Jesuit seminary containing valuable manuscripts of Cicero's "Epistles", a curiously illuminated French translation of Ovid's "Metamorphoses", two folio volumes of French romances which belonged to Louis X, a 1742 copy of Pliny's "Natural History", and several Chinese manuscripts including a "History of China" translated into French. Could find no reference in his notes to: the 'Antirtrinum monspeliense' found in woods of the Granamont; the view of the Isle de Marguerite; the temperature of the mineral water at Aix; nor any account of supposed medical virtues of the excrescences of 'Lentiscus'. Informs Smith of [Thomas] Martyn's intentions of publishing his own "Tour through Italy", enquires after Smith's plan for his.
Underwhelmed by first part of [Erasmus] Darwin's "Botanic Garden". Strong republican feelings in Sheffield: cannon have been firing on news of the Duke of Brunswick's retreat [the "Brunswick Manifesto" issued on 25 July 1792 threatened the French populace with retaliatory violence by Prussian forces should the French royal family be harmed. It antagonised the population and on 20 September 1792 the Prussians were defeated in the Battle of Valmy and retreated from France]. The 15 October has been set as a day of celebration by several sets of workmen and a republican printer has a new sign of [Thomas] Paine [(1737-1809), author and revolutionary] at a bookdesk, and several street corners bear the inscription "Death or Liberty". A government directive for dealers in perfumery, hats, and gloves to form committees to report on evasion of duties was met with remark that it "must be a poor government that cannot be supported without sowing dissension among neighbours and making fellow citizens informers of one another". Asks Smith to procure from Mr Parker of Fleet Street one of [John Mervin] Nooth's [(1737-1828), physician] "improved machines for impregnating water with fixed air [carbon dioxide]".