hair is curled and powdered, their coiffure a sort of French round-eared caps, with white tippets, a sort of ruff and large tucker: in short, a very pretty dress. The nuns are entirely in black, with crape veils and long trains, deep white handkerchiefs, and forehead cloths, and a very long train. The chapel is plain but very pretty, and in the middle of the choir under a flat marble lies the foundress. Madame de Cambis, one of the nuns, who are about forty, is beautiful as a Madonna. The abbess has no distinction but a larger and richer gold cross her apartment consists of two very small rooms. Of Madame de Maintenon we did not see fewer than twenty pictures. The young one looking over her shoulder has a round face, without the least resemblance to those of her latter age. That in the royal mantle, of which you know I have a copy, is the most repeated; but there is another with a longer and leaner face, which has by far the most sensible look. She is in black, with a high point head and band, a long train, and is sitting in a chair of purple velvet. Before her knees stands her niece Madame de Noailles, a child; at a distance a view of Versailles or St. Cyr, I could not distinguish which. We were shown some rich reliquaires, and the corpo santo that was sent to her by the Pope. We were then carried into the public room of each class. In the first, the young ladies, who were playing at chess, were ordered to sing to us the choruses of Athaliah; in another, they danced minuets and country-dances, while a nun, not quite so able as St. Cecilia, played on a violin. In the others, they acted before us the proverbs or conversations written by Madame de Maintenon for their instruction; for she was not only their foundress but their saint, and their adoration of her memory

1 Madame du Deffand, in her letter to Walpole of the 10th of May 1776, encloses the following portrait of Madame de Cambise, by Madame de la Vallière :-" Non, non, Madame, je ne ferai point votre portrait: vous avez une manière d'être si noble, si fine, si piquante, si délicate, si séduisante; votre gentilesse et vos graces changent si souvent pour n'en être que plus aimable, que l'on ne peut saisir aucun de vos traits ni au physique ni au moral.” She was niece of La Marquise de Boufflers, and, having fled to England at the breaking out of the French Revolution, resided here until her death, which took place at Richmond in January 1809.-E.

has quite eclipsed the Virgin Mary. We saw their dormitory, and saw them at supper; and at last were carried to their archives, where they produced volumes of her letters, and where one of the nuns gave me a small piece of paper with three sentences in her handwriting. I forgot to tell you, that this kind dame, who took to me extremely, asked me if we had many convents and many relics in England. I was much embarrassed for fear of destroying her good opinion of me, and so said we had but few now. Oh! we went to the apothecairie, where they treated us with cordials, and where one of the ladies told me inoculation was a sin, as it was a voluntary detention from mass, and as voluntary a cause of eating gras. Our visit concluded in the garden, now grown very venerable, where the young ladies played at little games before us. After a stay of four hours we took our leave. I begged the abbess's blessing; she smiled, and said, she doubted I should not place much faith in it. She is a comely old gentlewoman, and very proud of having seen Madame de Maintenon. Well! was not I in the right to wish you with me? could you have passed a day more agreeably?

I will conclude my letter with a most charming trait of Madame de Mailly, which cannot be misplaced in such a chapter of royal concubines. Going to St. Sulpice, after she had lost the King's heart, a person present desired the crowd to make way for her. Some brutal young officers said, “Comment, pour cette catin-là!" She turned to them, and, with the most charming modesty said, "Messieurs, puisque vous me connoissez, priez Dieu pour moi." I am sure it will bring tears into your eyes. Was not she the Publican, and Maintenon the Pharisee? Good night! I hope I am going to dream of all I have been seeing. As my impressions and my fancy, when I am pleased, are apt to be strong, my night, perhaps, may still be more productive of ideas than the day has been. It will be charming, indeed, if Madame de Cambis is the ruling tint. Adieu! Yours ever.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Oct. 13, 1769.

I ARRIVED last night at eleven o'clock, and found a letter from you, which gave me so much pleasure, that I must write you a line, though I am hurried to death. You cannot imagine how rejoiced I am that Lord North' drags you to light again; it is a satisfaction I little expected. When do you come? I am impatient. I long to know your projects.

I had a dreadful passage of eight hours, was drowned, though not shipwrecked, and was sick to death. I have been six times at sea before, and never suffered the least, which makes the mortification the greater: but as Hercules was not more robust than I, though with an air so little Herculean, I have not so much as caught cold, though I was wet to the skin with the rain, had my lap full of waves, was washed from head to foot in the boat at ten o'clock at night, and stepped into the sea up to my knees. Q'avois-je à faire dans cette galère?? In truth, it is a little late to be seeking adventures. Adieu! I must finish, but I am excessively happy with what you have told me. Yours ever.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 16, 1769.

I ARRIVED at my own Louvre last Wednesday night, and am now at my Versailles. Your last letter reached me but

'Lord North had appointed Mr. Montagu his private secretary.

2 Walpole left Paris on the 5th of October. Early on the morning of the 6th, Madame du Deffand thus wrote to him:-"N'exigez point de gaîeté, contentez-vous de ne pas trouver de tristesse: je n'envoyai point chez vous hier matin; j'ignore à quelle heure vous partites; tout ce que je sais c'est que vous n'ètes plus ici." And again, on the 9th:-" Je ne respirerai à mon aise qu'après une lettre de Douvres. Ah! je me haïs bien de tout le mal que je vous cause; trois journées de route, autant de nuits détestables, une embarquement, un passage, le risque de mille accidens, voilà le bien que je vous procure. Ah! c'est bien vous qui pouvez dire en pensant à moi, ' Qu'allais-je faire dans cette galère? -E.

two days before I left Paris, for I have been an age at Calais and upon the sea. I could execute no commission for you, and, in truth, you gave me no explicit one; but I have brought you a bit of china, and beg you will be content with a little present, instead of a bargain. Said china is, or will be soon, in the custom-house; but I shall have it, I fear, long before you come to London.

I am sorry those boys got at my tragedy. I beg you would keep it under lock and key; it is not at all food for the public; at least not till I am "food for worms, good Percy." Nay, it is not an age to encourage anybody, that has the least vanity, to step forth. There is a total extinction of all taste: our authors are vulgar, gross, illiberal: the theatre swarms with wretched translations, and ballad operas, and we have nothing new but improving abuse. I have blushed at Paris, when the papers came over crammed with ribaldry, or with Garrick's insufferable nonsense about Shakspeare. As that man's writings will be preserved by his name, who will believe that he was a tolerable actor? Cibber wrote as bad odes, but then Cibber wrote the Careless Husband and his own Life, which both deserve immortality. Garrick's prologues and epilogues are as bad as his Pindarics and pantomimes.1

I feel myself here like a swan, that, after living six weeks in a nasty pool upon a common, is got back into its own. Thames. I do nothing but plume and clean myself, and enjoy the verdure and silent waves. Neatness and greenth are so essential in my opinion to the country, that in France, where I see nothing but chalk and dirty peasants, I seem in a terrestrial purgatory that is neither town nor country. The face of England is so beautiful, that I do not believe Tempe or Arcadia were half so rural; for both lying in hot climates, must have wanted the turf of our lawns. It is unfortunate to have so pastoral a taste, when I want a cane more than a crook. We are absurd creatures; at twenty, I loved nothing but London.

'Mr. J. Sharp, in a letter to Garrick, of the 28th of March in this year, says " I met Mr. Gray at dinner last Sunday: he spoke handsomely of your happy knack of epilogues; but he calls the Stratford Jubilee, Vanity Fair." See Garrick Correspondence, vol. i. p. 337.—E.

I think of passing

Tell me when you shall be in town. most of my time here till after Christmas. Adieu!

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

Strawberry Hill, Tuesday, Nov. 14, 1769.

I AM here quite alone, and did not think of going to town till Friday for the opera, which I have not yet seen. In compliment to you and your Countess, I will make an effort, and be there on Thursday; and will either dine with you at your own house, or at your brother's; which you choose. This is a great favour, and beyond my Lord Temple's journey to dine with my Lord Mayor. I am so sick of the follies of all sides, that I am happy to be at quiet here, and to know no more of them than what I am forced to see in the newspapers; and those I skip over as fast as I can.

The account you give me of Lady *** was just the same as I received from Paris. I will show you a very particular letter I received by a private hand from thence; which convinces me that I guessed right, contrary to all the wise, that the journey to Fontainbleau would overset Monsieur de Choiseul. I think he holds but by a thread, which will snap soon. I am labouring hard with the Duchess3 to procure the Duke of Richmond satisfaction in the favour he has asked about his duchy; but he shall not know it till it is completed, if I can be so lucky as to succeed. I think I shall, if they do not fall immediately.

You perceive how barren I am, and why I have not written to you. I pass my time in clipping and pasting prints; and do not think I have read forty pages since I came to England. I bought a poem called Trinculo's Trip to the Jubilee; having been struck with two lines in an extract in the papers,

1 At Guildhall, on the 9th of November, in the second mayoralty of Alderman Beckford.-E.

2 Walpole had received a letter, of the 2nd, from Madame du Deffand, describing the growing influence of Madame du Barry, and her increasing enmity to the Duc de Choiseul.-E. • Of Aubigné.

The Duchess of Choiseul.