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golds, as the price and necessary size would not admit metal enough without, to leave it of any solidity.

The other point I am indeed ashamed to mention so late. I am more guilty than even about the scissors. Lord Hertford sent me word a fortnight ago, that an ensigncy was vacant, to which he should recommend Mr. Fitzgerald. I forgot both to thank him and to acquaint your ladyship, who probably know it without my communication. I have certainly lost my memory! This is so idle and young, that I begin to fear I have acquired something of the fashionable man, which I so much dreaded. It is to England then that I must return to recover friendship and attention? I literally wrote to Lord Hertford, and forgot to thank him. Sure I did not use ̧ to be so abominable! I cannot account for it; I am as black as ink, and must turn Methodist, to fancy that repentance can wash me white again. No, I will not; for then I may sin again, and trust to the same nostrum.

I had the honour of sending your ladyship the funeral sermon on the Dauphin, and a tract to laugh at sermons: “Your bane and antidote are both before you." The first is by the Archbishop of Toulouse,1 who is thought the first man of the clergy. It has some sense, no pathetic, no eloquence, and, I think, clearly no belief in his own doctrine. The latter is by the Abbé Coyer,2 written livelily, upon a single idea; and,

1 Brionne de Lomenie, Archbishop of Toulouse, and afterwards Cardinal de Lomenie, or as he was nicknamed by the populace of Paris, “Cardinal de l'Ignominie," was great-nephew to Madame du Deffand. The spirit of political intrigue raised him to the administration of affairs during the last struggles of the old régime, and exposed him to the contempt he deserved for aspiring to such a situation at such a moment. He was arrested at the commencement of the Revolution, and escaped the guillotine by dying in one of the prisons at Paris in 1794.-E.

2 This pamphlet of the Abbé Coyer, which was entitled "On Preaching," produced a great sensation in Paris at the time of its publication. Its object is to prove, that those who have occupied themselves in preaching to others, ever since the world began, whether poets, priests, or philosophers, have been but a parcel of prattlers, listened to if eloquent, laughed at if dull; but who have never corrected anybody: the true preacher being the government, which joins to the moral maxims which it inculcates the force of example and the power of execution. Baron de Grimm characterizes the Abbé as being "l'homme du monde le plus lourd, l'ennui personnifié," and relates the following anecdote of him during his visit to Voltaire at the Château de Ferney: "The

though I agree upon the inutility of the remedy he rejects, I have no better opinion of that he would substitute. Preaching has not failed from the beginning of the world till to-day, not because inadequate to the disease, but because the disease is incurable. If one preached to lions and tigers, would it cure them of thirsting for blood, and sucking it when they have an opportunity? No; but when they are whelped in the Tower, and both caressed and beaten, do they turn out a jot more tame when they are grown up? So far from it, all the kindness in the world, all the attention, cannot make even a monkey (that is no beast of prey) remember a pair of scissors or an ensigncy.

Adieu, Madam! and pray don't forgive me, till I have forgiven myself. I dare not close my letter with any professions; for could you believe them in one that had so much reason to Your most obedient humble servant?

think himself

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Paris, March 12, 1766.

I CAN write but two lines, for I have been confined these four or five days with a violent inflammation in my eyes, and which has prevented my returning to Madame Roland. I did not find her at home, but left your letter. My right eye is well again, and I have been to take air.

How can you ask leave to carry anybody to Strawberry? May not you do what you please with me and mine? Does not Arlington-street comprehend Strawberry? why don't you go and lie there if you like it? It will be, I think, the middle of April before I return; I have lost a week by this confinement, and would fain satisfy my curiosity entirely, now I am here. I have seen enough, and too much, of the people. I

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first day, the philosopher bore his company with tolerable politeness; but the next morning he interrupted him in a long prosing narrative of his travels, by this question: Savez-vous bien, M. l'Abbé, la différence qu'il y a entre Don Quichotte et vous? c'est que Don Quichotte prenait toutes les auberges pour des châteaux; et vous, vous prenez tous les châteaux pour des auberges.'' The Abbé died in 1782.-E.

am glad you are upon civil terms with Habiculeo. The less I esteem folks, the less I would quarrel with them.

I don't wonder that Colman and Garrick write ill in concert,' when they write ill separately; however, I am heartily glad the Clive shines. Adieu! Commend me to Charlesstreet. Kiss Fanny, and Mufti, and Ponto for me, when you go to Strawberry: dear souls, I long to kiss them myself.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Paris, March 21, 1766.

You make me very happy, in telling me you have been so comfortable in my house. If you would set up a bed there, you need never go out of it. I want to invite you, not to expel you. April the tenth my pilgrimage will end, and the fifteenth, or sixteenth, you may expect to see me, not much fattened with the flesh-pots of Egypt, but almost as glad to come amongst you again as I was to leave you.

Your Madame Roland is not half so fond of me as she tells me; I have been twice at her door, left your letter and my own direction, but have not received so much as a message to tell me she is sorry she was not at home. Perhaps this is her first vision of Paris, and it is natural for a Frenchwoman to have her head turned with it; though what she takes for rivers of emerald, and hotels of ruby and topaz, are to my eyes, that have been purged with euphrasy and rue, a filthy stream, in which everything is washed without being cleaned, and dirty houses, ugly streets, worse shops, and churches loaded with bad pictures. Such is the material part of this

The popular comedy of The Clandestine Marriage, the joint production of Garrick and Colman, had just been brought out at Drury-lane

theatre.-E.

2 Walpole's picture of Paris, in 1766, is not much more favourable than that of Peter Heylin, who visited that city in the preceding century :"This I am confident of," says Peter, "that the nastiest lane in London is frankincense and juniper to the sweetest street in this city. The ancient by-word was (and there is good reason for it) il destaint comme la fange de Paris:' had I the power of making proverbs, I would only change il destaint' into 'il put,' and make the by-word ten

paradise; for the corporeal, if Madame Roland admires it, I have nothing to say; however, I shall not be sorry to make one at Lady Frances Elliot's. Thank you for admiring my deaf old woman; if I could bring my old blind one with me, I should resign this paradise as willingly as if it was built of opal, and designed by a fisherman, who thought that what makes a fine necklace would make a finer habitation.

We did not want your sun; it has shone here for a fortnight with all its lustre; but yesterday a north wind, blown by the Czarina herself I believe, arrived, and declared a month of March of full age. This morning it snowed; and now, clouds of dust are whisking about the streets and quays, edged with an east wind, that gets under one's very shirt. I should not be quite sorry if a little of it tapped my lilacs on their green noses, and bade them wait for their master.

The Princess of Talmond sent me this morning a picture of two pug-dogs, and a black and white greyhound, wretchedly painted. I could not conceive what I was to do with this daub, but in her note she warned me not to hope to keep it. It was only to imprint on my memory the size, and features, and spots of Diana, her departed greyhound, in order that I might get her exactly such another. Don't you think my memory will return well stored, if it is littered with defunct lap-dogs. She is so devout, that I did not dare send her word, that I am not possessed of a twig of Jacob's broom, with which he streaked cattle as he pleased.

Tother day, in the street, I saw a child in a leading-string, whose nurse gave it a farthing for a beggar; the babe delivered its mite with a grace, and a twirl of the hand. I don't think your cousin T * * *'s first grandson will be so wellbred. Adieu! Yours ever.

times more orthodox. That which most amazed me is, that in such a perpetuated constancy of stinks, there should yet be found so large and admirable a variety-a variety so special and distinct, that any chemical nose (I dare lay my life on it), after two or three perambulations, would hunt out blindfold each several street by the smell, as perfectly as another by the eye."-E.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Paris, April 3, 1766.

ONE must be just to all the world: Madame Roland, I find, has been in the country, and at Versailles, and was so obliging as to call on me this morning, but I was so disobliging as not to be awake. I was dreaming dreams; in short, I had dined at Livry; yes, yes, at Livry, with a Langlade and De la Rochefoucaulds. The abbey is now possessed by an Abbé de Malherbe, with whom I am acquainted, and who had given me a general invitation. general invitation. I put it off to the last moment, that the bois and allées might set off the scene a little, and contribute to the vision; but it did not want it. Livry is situated in the Forêt de Bondi, very agreeably on a flat, but with hills near it, and in prospect. There is a great air of simplicity and rural about it, more regular than our taste, but with an old-fashioned tranquillity, and nothing of colifichet. Not a tree exists that remembers the charming woman, because in this country an old tree is a traitor, and forfeits its head to the crown; but the plantations are not young, and might very well be as they were in her time. The Abbé's house is decent and snug; a few paces from it is the sacred pavilion built for Madame de Sévigné by her uncle, and much as it was in her day; a small saloon below for dinner, then an arcade, but the niches now closed, and painted in fresco with medallions of her, the Grignan, the Fayette, and the Rochefoucauld. Above, a handsome large room, with a chimney-piece in the best taste of Louis the Fourteenth's time; a holy family in good relief over it, and the cypher of her uncle Coulanges; a neat little bed-chamber within, and two or three clean little chambers over them. On one side of the garden, leading to the great road, is a little bridge of wood, on which the dear woman used to wait for the courier that brought her daughter's letters. Judge with what veneration and satisfaction I set my foot upon it! If you will come to France with me next year, we will go and sacrifice on that sacred spot together.

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