I beg your pardon for taking up your time with these trifles. The day after to-morrow we go in cavalcade with the duchess3 to her audience; I have got my cravat and shammy shoes. Adieu !

Yours ever.

TO THE REV. MR, COLE.

Paris, Jan. 18, 1766.

DEAR SIR,

He

I had extreme satisfaction in receiving your letter, having been in great pain about you, and not knowing where to direct a letter. Favre1 told me, you had had an accident, did not say what it was, but that you was not come to town.2 received all the letters and parcels safe, for which I give you many thanks, and a thousand more for your kindness in thinking of them, when you was suffering so much. It was a dreadful conclusion of your travels; but I trust will leave no consequences behind it. The weather is by no means favourable for a recovery, if it is as severe in England as at Paris. We have had two or three days of fog, rather than thaw; but the frost is set in again as sharp as ever. I persisted in going about to churches and convents, till I thought I should have lost my nose and fingers. I have submitted at last to the season, and lie a-bed all the morning; but I hope in February and March to recover the time I have lost. I shall not return to England before the end of March, being determined not to hazard anything. I continue perfectly well, and few things could tempt me to risk five months more of gout.

I will certainly bring you some pastils, and have them better packed, if it is possible. You know how happy I should be if would send me any other commission. As you say nothing of the Eton living, I fear that prospect has failed you; which

you

3 Of Richmond. [Or.]

4 At Versailles, as ambassadress. [Or.]

1 A servant of Mr. Walpole's left in London. [Or.]

2 In disembarking at Dover, Mr. Cole met with an accident, that had confined him there three weeks to his bed. [Or.]

gives me great regret, as it would give me very sensible pleasure to have you fixed somewhere (and not far from me) for your ease and satisfaction.

I am glad the cathedral of Amiens answered your expectation; so has the Sainte Chapelle mine; you did not tell me what charming enamels I should find in the ante-chapel. I have seen another vast piece, and very fine, of the constable Montmorenci, at the maréchale duchesse de Luxembourg's.

Rousseau is gone to England with Mr. Hume. You will very probably see a letter to Rousseau, in the name of the king of Prussia, writ to laugh at his affectations. It has made excessive noise here, and I believe quite ruined the author with many philosophers. When I tell you I was the author, it is telling you how cheap I hold their anger. If it does not reach you, you shall see it at Strawberry, where I flatter myself I shall see you this summer, and quite well. Adieu!

To MR. GRAY.

Paris, Jan. 25, 1766.

I AM much indebted to you for your kind letter and advice; and though it is late to thank you for it, it is at least a stronger proof that I do not forget it. However, I am a little obstinate, as you know, on the chapter of health, and have persisted through this Siberian winter in not adding a grain to my clothes, and in going open-breasted without an under-waistcoat. In short, though I like extremely to live, it must be in my own way, as long as I can it is not youth I court, but liberty; and I think making one's self tender is issuing a general warrant against one's own person. I suppose I shall submit to confinement when I cannot help it; but I am indifferent enough to life not to care if it ends soon after my prison begins.

I have not delayed so long to answer your letter, from not thinking of it, or from want of matter, but from want of time. I am constantly occupied, engaged, amused, till I cannot bring a hundredth part of what I have to say into the compass

of a

letter. You will lose nothing by this: you know my volubility, when I am full of new subjects; and I have at least many hours of conversation for you at my return. One does not learn a whole nation in four or five months; but, for the time, few, I believe, have seen, studied, or got so much acquainted with the French as I have.

By what I said of their religious or rather irreligious opinions, you must not conclude their people of quality atheists—at least, not the men-Happily for them, poor souls! they are not capable of going so far into thinking. They assent to a great deal, because it is the fashion, and because they don't know how to contradict. They are ashamed to defend the Roman Catholic religion, because it is quite exploded; but I am convinced they believe it in their hearts. They hate the parliaments and the philosophers, and are rejoiced that they may still idolize royalty. At present, too, they are a little triumphant: the court has shown a little spirit, and the parliaments much less: but as the duc de Choiseul, who is very fluttering, unsettled, and inclined to the philosophers, has made a compromise with the parliament of Bretagne, the parliaments might venture out again, if, as I fancy will be the case, they are not glad to drop a cause, of which they began to be a little weary of the inconveniences.

The generality of the men, and more than the generality, are dull and empty. They have taken up gravity, thinking it was philosophy and English, and so have acquired nothing in the room of their natural lévity and cheerfulness. However, as their high opinion of their own country remains, for which they can no longer assign any reason, they are contemptuous and reserved, instead of being ridiculously, consequently pardonably, impertinent. I have wondered, knowing my own countrymen, that we had attained such a superiority. I wonder no longer, and have a little more respect for English heads than I had.

The women do not seem of the same country: if they are less gay than they were, they are more informed, enough to make them very conversable. I know six or seven with very superior understandings; some of them with wit, or with softness, or very good sense.

Madame Geoffrin, of whom you have heard much, is an extraordinary woman, with more common sense than I almost ever met with. Great quickness in discovering characters,

penetration in going to the bottom of them, and a pencil that never fails in a likeness-seldom a favourable one. She exacts and preserves, spite of her birth and their nonsensical prejudices about nobility, great court and attention. This she acquires by a thousand little arts and offices of friendship; and by a freedom and severity, which seem to be her sole end of drawing a concourse to her; for she insists on scolding those she inveigles to her. She has little taste and less knowledge, but protects artisans and authors, and courts a few people to have the credit of serving her dependents. She was bred under the famous madame Tencin, who advised her never to refuse any man; for, said her mistress, though nine in ten should not care a farthing for you, the tenth may live to be an useful friend. She did not adopt or reject the whole plan, but fully retained the purport of the maxim. In short, she is an epitome of empire, subsisting by rewards and punishments. Her great enemy, madame du Deffand, was for a short time mistress of the regent, is now very old and stone blind, but retains all her vivacity, wit, memory, judgment, passions, and agreeableness. She goes to operas, plays, suppers, and Versailles; gives suppers twice a week; has every thing new read to her; makes new songs and epigrams, ay, admirably, and remembers every one that has been made these fourscore years. She corresponds with Voltaire, dictates charming letters to him, contradicts him, is no bigot to him or any body, and laughs both at the clergy and the philosophers, In a dispute, into which she easily falls, she is very warm, and yet scarce ever in the wrong: her judgment on every subject is as just as possible; on every point of conduct as wrong as possible for she is all love and hatred, passionate for her friends to enthusiasm, still anxious to be loved, I don't mean by lovers, and a vehement enemy, but openly. As she can have no amusement but conversation, the least solitude and ennui are insupportable to her, and put her into the power of several worthless people, who eat her suppers when they can eat nobody's of higher rank; wink to one another and laugh at her; hate her because she has forty times more parts and venture to hate her because she is not rich. She has an old friend whom I must mention, a monsieur Pondevelle,' author of the Fat puni, and

1 Monsieur de Pontdeveyle, the younger brother of the marquis d'Argental, the friend of Voltaire and of the king of Prussia. Their mother, madame

the Complaisant, and of those pretty novels, the Comte de, Cominge, the Siege of Calais, and les Malheurs de l'Amour. Would not you expect this old man to be very agreeable? He can be so, but seldom is: yet he has another very different and very amusing talent, the art of parody, and is unique in his kind. He composes tales to the tunes of long dances: for instance, he has adapted the Regent's Daphnis and Chloe to one, and made it ten times more indecent; but is so old and sings it so well, that it is permitted in all companies. He has succeeded still better in les caractères de la danse, to which he has adapted words that express all the characters of love. With all this he has not the least idea of cheerfulness in conversation; seldom speaks but on grave subjects, and not often on them; is a humourist, very supercilious, and wrapt up in admiration of his own country, as the only judge of his merit. His air and look are cold and forbidding; but ask him to sing, or praise his works, his eyes: and smiles open and brighten up. In short, I can show him to you the self-applauding poet in Hogarth's Rake's Progress, the second print, is so like his very features and very wig, that you would know him by it, if you came hither—for he certainly will not go to you.

Madame de Mirepoix's understanding is excellent of the useful kind, and can be so when she pleases of the agreeable kind. She has read, but seldom shows it, and has perfect taste. Her manner is cold, but very civil; and she conceals even the blood of Lorrain, without ever forgetting it. Nobody in France knows the world better, and nobody is personally so well with the king. She is false, artful, and insinuating beyond measure when it is her interest, but indolent and a coward. She never had any passion but gaming, and always loses. For ever paying court, the sole produce of a life of art is to get money from the king to carry on a course of paying debts or contracting new ones, which she discharges as fast as she is able. She advertised devotion to get made dame du palais to the queen; de Ferioles, was sister to the celebrated madame de Tencin and to the cardinal of the same name. [Ed.]

2 La maréchale de Mirepoix was the first woman of consequence who countenanced and appeared in public at Versailles with madame du Barri; while, on the other hand, her brother, the prince de Beauvau and his wife, gave great offence by refusing to see or be of any parties with madame du Barri. [Ed.]