her at home: she wrote me a very obliging note to express her regret. I do not know whether I mentioned to you that I was disgusted with the noise and dirtiness of an hotel garni. I had the best apartments in the best hotel at Paris. In my drawingroom I had a fine lustre, noble looking glasses, velvet chairs; and, in my bedchamber, a rich bed with a superb canopy. Poets and philosophers have told us that cares and solicitudes lurk under rich canopies, but they never told us, that at Paris les punaises lie concealed there; small evils, it may be said, but I assure you as incompatible with sound sleep as the most formidable terrors, or the wildest dreams of ambition. I did not rest well at night, and, in the day, for the few hours I was chez moi, I did not enjoy that kind of comfort one feels at home, so I was determined to have a habitation quite to myself. I got a pretty small house at Chaillot, with the most delightful prospect; it was unfurnished, so I hired furniture. I had not brought house linen, but I found a Flemish linendraper; then I composed my establishment of servants; I have, of English, French, Italians, Germans, and Savoyards; they cannot combine against me, for they hardly understand one another, but they all understand me, and we are as quiet and orderly as possible: I was not ten days from the time I hired my house before I inhabited it. I made use of it at first as a house to sleep in at night, and to visit from in the day, but I soon found out that it was a house in which one might dine and ask others to dinner. I got an excellent cook, who had lived with the Prince of Wirtem

intimately with the French, I did not imagine they were so different from us in their opinions, sentiments, manners, and modes of life as I find them. In every thing they seem to think perfection and excellence to be that which is at the greatest distance from simplicity. I verily believe that if they had the ambrosia of the gods served at their table they would perfume it, and they would make a ragout sauce to nectar; we know very well they would put rouge on the cheek of Hebe. If any orator here delivers a very highly adorned period he is clapped; at the academy where some verses were read, which were a translation of Homer, the more the translator deviated from the simplicity of Homer, the more loud the applause; of their tragedies, an extravagant verse of the poets, and an outrageous action of the actor is clapped. The Corinthian architecture is too plain, and they add ornaments of fancy. The fine Grecian forms of vases and tripods they say are triste, and, therefore, they adorn them. It would be very dangerous to inspire young persons with this contempt of simplicity, before experience taught choice or discretion. The business of the toilette is here brought to an art and a science. Whatever is supposed to add to the charm of society and conversation is cultivated with the utmost attention. That mode of life is thought most eligible that does not leave one moment vacant from amusement. That style of writing or conversation the best that is always the most brilliant. This kind of high colouring gives a splendour to every thing, which is pleasing to a stranger, who considers every ob

ject that presents itself as a sight and as a spectacle, but I think would grow painful if perpetual. I do not mean to say, that there are not some persons and some authors who, in their conversations and writings, have a noble simplicity, but, in general, there is too little of it. This taste of decoration makes every thing pretty, but leaves nothing great. I like my present way of life so well, I should be glad to stay here two months longer, but to avoid the dangers of a winter sea and land journey I shall return, as I intended, the first week in October.

I had a very agreeable French lady to dine with me to-day, and am to dine with her at Versailles on Sunday. As she is a woman of the bedchamber to the queen, she was obliged (being now in waiting) to ask leave to come to me; the queen, with her leave, said something very gracious concerning the character of your humble servant. The French say so many civil things from the highest of them to the lowest, I am glad I did not come to Paris when I was young enough to have my head turned.

We are going to sup with a most charming Marquise de Deffanta, who, being blind and upwards of fourscore, is polite and gay, and I suppose we shall stay till after midnight with her. I hope to get a peep at you in my journey through Kent.

Miss G desires her best compliments. I have sent you a copy of Voltaire's saucy letter, on a translator of Shakspeare appearing at Paris;

he was very wroth. Mr. le Tourneur, whom he

abuses, is a very modest ingenious man. Vol

MY LORD, WITH the history of man, I dare say, your lordship has written the history of woman. I beg that, in specifying their characters, you would take notice, that time and separation do not operate on the female heart as they do on that of the male. We need not go back so far as the time of Ulysses and Penelope to prove this. We may pass over the instance of his dalliance with the sole suitor that addressed him, the lovely Calypso, and the constant Penelope's continued disdain of the whole train of pertinacious wooers.

The more near and recent an example is the better; so, my lord, we will take our own times. You feel, you say, when you take up your pen to write to me, the same formality as on our first acquaintance. I, on the contrary, find, that my confidence in you has had time to take root: a long winter cannot blast, dreary seasons cannot wither it. Under its shadow I am protected from